Research at Lithium Lab Part2

[#1]

Last time I talked about what got me interested in social analytics and what is the big community topic that is currently taking up most of my brain cycles. This time, let me give you a bit more detail about my current projects at Lithium Lab.

My research at Lithium focuses on a couple of key areas. First, since a community is all about the people, the first area of research focuses on understanding user behaviors. The goal of this research is to understand the complex interplay between different groups of users through social network analysis (see figure below) and discover the dynamics that drives a healthy and successful community.

Currently I am particularly interested in two groups of users

1. the superusers,
2. and the lurkers.

Superusers are obviously interesting because they contribute so much and bring so much value to the community. But why do they contribute? What is their incentive? No one comes to the community as a superuser. Yet, in every community, we observe the rapid emergence of influential superusers. Can we accurately predict who will become a superuser soon after they join the community?

Lurkers are interesting in their ownright because there are so many of them. The majority of the audience - up to 90% of the users - could be lurking. What keeps them engaged even though they don't participate? Can we incent lurkers to change their behavior and start to participate and move up the rank ladder, maybe ultimately becoming a superuser?  That is surely a holy grail for community managers.

Another area of focus is research which aims to derive predictive models for business value. The goal of this research is to discover all the mechanisms where the Lithium platform can bring value and then quantify the actual value they bring to the business. There are many mechanisms that our community platform and services can bring value to our client. Just to name a few, for example: call deflections, word of mouth (WOM), collaborative innovation, crowd sourcing, even lurking can bring certain values to our client. Some of these mechanisms, such as call deflection, are well understood and their ROI are readily quantifiable. But the value of WOM, and lurking are less tangible.

Currently I am working a model that quantifies the value of WOM in a community. This is along the road to quantifying the value of a superuser. Superusers actually come in many flavors (product experts, advocates, brand evangelists, opinion leaders, etc) and each type of superusers brings value through different mechanisms. More importantly, different community needs a different mix of superusers. For example, a support community probably needs a lot of product experts and some opinion leaders; where as a marketing community would need more advocates and brand evangelists. What is the optimal mixture of superusers for any given community?

With all that said, I hope you are excited? I certainly am. I am hoping this will give you a little more context for the live-chat at the Social CRM Virtual Summit. I look forward to seeing you there and chatting with you on November 11th. Remember if you haven't registered for the Virtual Summit, I highly recommend it - and you can sign up here.

[#2]

These are great technology questions and explorations, and I can suggest a few to the audience to make sure some of your lurkers become superusers (which can be as simple as making your password requirements minimal... ask me more if you want some promising data on this).

But I think there is also a deeper, more sociological strategy that needs to be addressed for superusers and "lurkers" (I don't care for that term) as well.

One of my favorite T.S. Eliot quotes is:

"To be of importance to others is to be alive."

Needless to say, technologies have changed since Eliot's career and Nobel Award, but the idea of why people contribute and help others has not. At the end of the day, what we really want is to not go unnoticed. We want a sense of accommplishment, whether it's from our friends, co-workers, or loved ones.  What does this mean, in simpler terms. We are all praise junkies.

Maybe it's just my (younger) generation, but we live and die by praise. Due to the new, connected world, our need as become an addiction.   Effective praise can permanently raise someone’s performance and can dramatically alter someone’s self-image (think of how many people superusers have helped in total), or even the trajectory of their life.  At the very least, it can make their day better.  But here's what sociologists, all the way back to E. Goffman or to current sociology researchers, are saying:

You need to effectively praise your superusers, but there is a right and a wrong way to give praise.  Keep in mind, many of these studies were face-to-face research projects, but I think the final outcomes are similarly relevant for those of us in social media:

At the very least, your praise should always include these three elements:

• The name of the person you are praising (not a generic email to all superusers)
• The specific thing you feel they achieved or contributed (indentify it, and they'll know you paid attention)
• Seriousness / sincerity (no one likes getting praise from a smiling fool...)
• Most sociologists actually recommend giving sincere praise in private, as public will cause negative feelings of competition or a dilution of the value of the praise.

This all means, really, is that as a community manager, you should only give praise that you actually mean. Unearned praise is mere flattery, and will not help you retain or recruit.  As your community becomes more successful, and you have established a vibrant group of people, you will increasingly become the kind of person whose opinion is valued by others. Think about a  time you earned the praise of somebody you respected.  You valued that praise because you valued the opinion of the person giving it. And, you valued that praise because you trusted the sincerity of the person giving it.

[#3]

Hello Patrick,

Thank you for the comment. These are great tips for community managers. I couldn't agree more that you should never give praise that you don't really meant. Once that gets into a habbit, the community will lose credibility at the beginning, and eventually lose trust from their users. When that happens, that is one way that I've seen communities failed. So be honest and sincere!