Community Engagement Series #1 – Creating An Online Research Community Plan

Over the course of the next two weeks we’ll be sharing a series of quick tips to help you achieve best practice and heighten levels of community engagement within your online research communities.

Whether you’re new to communities or a seasoned expert, we can virtually guarantee that you and your client(s) will benefit from taking these thought starters and recommendations!

Today we are going to explore opportunities for planning effective qual research activities.

Align topics with community interests

Variety is the spice of life when it comes to research community engagement. How diverse has your agenda been to date? Has there been a tendency for topics and activities to be purely research oriented and focussed on particular theme(s)? For best results review past levels of participation to see what has worked well (and not so well). Also, don’t forget to invite feedback on the future topics that members would like to see. We highly recommend activities that connect with personal interests or actively promote self-learning, helping individuals to explore and understand their attitudes and behaviours in the context of others.

Offer a varied selection of tasks and activities

If you have to date been relying on particular activity formats (e.g. discussions or surveys), why not try something new? Different activities appeal to different members, so keep things fresh by maintaining a varied community agenda. Why not flex hidden creative talents by inviting members to share drawings or collages to illustrate their thoughts and feelings, or look at opportunities to collaborate to brainstorm and develop future product / service solutions! Beyond concept assessment our versatile markup tool can also be used for a variety of projective tasks and techniques. The only limit is your imagination. These fun, creative exercises increase levels of interest and commitment, delivering fresh feedback and unique insights.

Gather feedback to explore the topics that your members would like to see

What’s working well in the community? Which aspects could be improved? Have recent demands been too great or small? It’s important to review whether or not your ongoing community is meeting your members’ expectations, and explore the future topics that they would like to see. Why not drop them the occasional survey or discussion to investigate? After all, it’s as much about them as it is you and your client.

Stay tuned for two more articles in this definitive series on how to engage participant in research communities. If you’d like to know more, contact Further by emailing us@go-further.co or calling +44 20 3515 3301 (UK), +1 310 853 6986 (US) or Get in touch