sparkler how to build a successful online community

What we’ll cover today

Creating asuccessful online

community

Introducing OpenMic

Understandingonline and offline

drivers

What Sparkler does

Consumer-led brandstrategy consultancy

Online and offlinemethodologies

We’ll be looking today at online communities in context

Who are we speaking to?

Participants? Respondents?

Audience? Consumers?

PEOPLE

Firstly, let’s define ‘online social community’

X X

What is ‘success’?

THE ‘OLD’MODEL

Client

Researcher

Respondent

Brief

Response

THE ‘NEW’MODEL

Client Participant

Ongoingparticipation

Researcher

Ongoingparticipation

Ongoingparticipation

A guiding principle – people don’t change that muchA guiding principle – people don’t change that much

How this influences our methodologies

Complementing, not replacing

Existing behaviours

Digital methodologies

Some thoughts

Everybody needsa reason toparticipate

Peoplecongregate (andcommunicate)around content

People come andgo as they please

People (mostly)police themselves

People can betrusted

Participationbegets

participation

The question becomes ‘why should people participate?’

Content Love of the subjectmatter

Social contact withothers

Being a part ofsomething special

None of these things are limited to the onlineworld

Why people participate

“I love checking in every day. I seem to learnsomething new each day or at least each week,

whether it’s discovering new music or finding outfacts about music and its true origin or being

introduced to new music. I also enjoy posting onboth pages too – I often post my favourite tune of

the day: new, old, classic or even unheard of, itintroduces other members to music they may or

may not have heard before!”

Why people participate

Kwame Lisa

So what do you do about that?

Upload relevantcontent

frequently

Show and shareyour love of thesubject matter

Allow socialcontact with

others

Give it a visualidentity

Don’t be too ‘BigBrother’

Use offlinecontact strategies

The role of incentives

Mercenary?

Motivated by money?

Participation

Sociability

Relevant incentives

Introducing Open Mic

So what does this mean in the case of Open Mic?

Set rhythms

Newdevelopments

Staying on topic

Profile pages

Freestyle

Hall of Fame

Benefits to 1Xtra

“Open Mic is a unique way of obtaining creativeinsight, reaching out to a young underserved

audience who don’t communicate throughtraditional means and are therefore hard to reach.

The community has also helped us build arelationship with our core audience. The site hasinformed the station’s creative expression and

been used as a strategic tool across 1Xtra”

Ade Adeluwoye, Research Manager, 1Xtra

Konrad Collao, Associate Partner

e: konrad@sparkler.co.uk m: 07886 203 863