Consumers in BRIC markets (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) account for nearly one-third of the world’s online population and experiment with social media more broadly than any other consumer on the planet. Market researchers who hope to use the Internet to attract, involve, and learn from these consumers need to provide settings and formats that maximize engagement. In this multinational study, we describe differences in engagement, conversation topic, and quality of contribution by country and explore those conditions that lead to the greatest vibrancy and quality. We also engage our experienced global facilitators in in-depth interviews to identify best practices for recruiting and engaging online community members, implications for generating actionable insights, case examples, and specific “to-do’s.”
Read the full text here: Building Engagement in Online Communities
The intent of this paper is to provide a summary of key findings from our detailed methodology paper, presented at ESOMAR in 2011. In broad strokes, results of quantitative analyses derived from over 6,000 community members (N=6,161) across 16 communities, representing 84 countries, suggest the following:
- It is more challenging, but not impossible, to engage members from BRIC countries in English-language communities
- In general, BRIC members were less engaged (i.e., they were active for a smaller percentage of weeks and were more passive in their behavior), but for every country there was a minority of highly engaged members
- Our findings demonstrate that no single nationality is definitively un-engageable.
- Providing a mix of activity types in which multinational community members can engage is one way to promote participation, regardless of country. Members from different countries behave differently in different communities.
Though relevant, neither nationality nor language is solely responsible for driving engagement. Rather, it is the unique intersection of person and environment, and the ability to create a compelling value proposition for members, which best explains how and when people engage.
