Online community management A richer social voting experience for A richer social voting experience for today’s online panellist

Mark SimonManaging Director Toluna UK

Agenda

Purposes of online communityPanel industry challengesCreating the world’s first online social voting community Toluna.com Toluna.com – Community features– Benefits for all stakeholders

Social media driving NPDSummary

Online behaviours are changing....

More and more time is spent on social networks. – Connections, Messaging, Profiles, Following, Tagging – now familiar concepts– In 2009 av Facebook visit was 16 minutes, now 21 (Hitwise 2010)

Activities:– Organising personal / business life – Facebook, LinkedIn– Organising personal / business life – Facebook, LinkedIn– Research - Yahoo Answers, Wikipedia– Publishing – YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia– Promotion / marketing / PR – Slideshare, MySpace– Meeting new people / interactions with common interest – Meet-up, Twitter,

groups on FB, LI

Meanwhile with research panels...

Survey taking behaviours are changing

Response rates to survey invites are declining– Email overload– Untargeted, poorly designed and lengthy surveys– More fun stuff to do elsewhere on the internet

Monetary incentives only are not the solution...– People always looking for the next best offer – spiral of decline– Social rewards make big sites work: Yahoo Answers, Yahoo

Movies, Wikipedia, etc.– Financial incentives – survey completion– Social incentives – site stickiness, traffic

Reliable survey completionModel needs to evolve

Online Panels

Panel CommunitiesInternet

Traffic

Email Lists

Panels

Online Research CommunitiesKey Characteristics

A platform for social interaction & engagement– Explicit research aim– Blind or branded

Allow member participation & content creationAllow member participation & content creation– Discussion forums, blogs, personal pages, member polling

& ratings, online focus groups, live chat & wikis

Participation driven by ego / social reward / curiosity – Sharing of results / changes with the community, member

visibility– ‘I made a difference ’

Online CommunitiesUses for research?

“Traditional” social networking sites or blogSpecialised websites for bespoke interaction on a large scaleVIP communities

Harnessing social media to drive the next generation of online access panelsgeneration of online access panels

Toluna.com case study

Toluna.com1st social research networking site

Aims– Challenge low response rates and recruitment challenges– Increase engagement with members

97% proprietary– Asp.Net and Java langs– Open source: Lucene, MySQL, memcache

Engagement concepts:Engagement concepts:– Personal profiles – Member-created polls and debates– Real time poll results– Rate and follow members– Publish polls & opinions externally

Richer member portraits– Every single vote or poll created recorded against member profile– New ways of collecting opinions

ALL the above allowed us to target surveys with a much higher level of ALL the above allowed us to target surveys with a much higher level of precisionprecision

From 10,000 members in 1 country in 2003 to...4 mil lion members in 34 countries in 2010

30,000 polls created a month by members 600,000 opinions posted a month by membersAverage time on site is 12 minutes per visit

Toluna.comCreating a community...not just membership

“Do you Recycle to feel less guilty

about the environment?”

“Do you do your weekly food shop

online?”

“Will you buy the new iPad?

“Smokers, thinking about quitting, if so

how?”

Toluna.comMember page

Public profile

Activity stream

Auto-generate relevant topics

Users following and followed

Users can message other users

Toluna.comSurvey page

Win points only

Creating a Poll

Toluna.comMember-created polls

Toluna.comLive polls appearing on site

Toluna.comTopics – user-generated debate

Post comment or agree / disagree

Users rate each other

Toluna Status Ranking

Toluna.comResults

10,000,000

12,000,000

14,000,000

16,000,000

18,000,000

20,000,000

num

ber

of v

otes

Number of votes on Toluna.com March 2009 7,288,603 votes by members

March 201017,513,596 votes

0

2,000,000

4,000,000

6,000,000

8,000,000

10,000,000

Tot

al n

umbe

r

17,513,596 votes by members

H2 20101 million votes daily

What’s in it for...

Agencies�Pre-screening / cost benefits�Incidence & feasibility checks�Reach niches groups rapidly�Add value / colour to pitches

�Sense check ideas

Panellists� Social reward

�Financial reward�Informational reward

�Product testing�Meet new people / groups

Toluna�Reduced panel recruitment £

�Increased member LTV�Profiling depth

�Pick up tough projects�New products / revenue streams

Brands� Brand advocacy

�Co-creation�Pre-screened customers�Engaged product testers

�Reduce NPD cycle

Challenges we faced

Usability – keeping it simpleScalable – many thousands of simultaneous usersWhat worked really well – ie intuitive usage with no help– Member-to-member messaging– Sponsored polls

Advice– Listen to your members and encourage feedback

– Act on it!

– Add instrumentation to track– Where members go– Site response times

Social Media Model

How it informed our NPD

Polls3 levels of participation

QuickSurveys

4 million members worldwide

Sponsored Polls

Quick Votes

QuickSurveysHarnessing toluna.com community traffic

Self-service platform– Create 1-5 questions– E-commerce engine – pay per click– Video, image and audio– Live results and drill down into – Live results and drill down into

5 key data points– Census rep algorithm– Fed directly from Toluna panels

Harnessed community traffic– 100-2,000 responses in hours– See results live

Toluna.comCase Study: Philips Steam Systems

Objectives:– To launch an integrated online

campaign using toluna.com, Facebook, Google– Build awareness and create a buzz– Get feedback from product users– Aid NPD– Aid NPD

Toluna.com– Targeted Surveys sent to respondents– Polls added to attract discussions

around products– Targeted respondents selected for

product testing– Reviews added on Toluna.com & third

party sites– All content optimised for Google

The ResultsToluna providing research platform

Campaign Results2 surveys attracted over 34,000 respondents & 11,500product test registrations28 product reviews published on Toluna.com. All content optimised - product listed on Top 2 natural search results on Googleon Google423 unique visitors from Facebook to toluna.com opinions

Business ResultsPhilips gained No.1 market share position in Oct - Dec for steam systemsProduct sales +33% on previous year during same periodMarket share +14% Oct – Dec 2009 Vs 2008

Measuring Digital Ad EffectivenessVia Toluna.com traffic

1,000,000+ panellists tagged

1. Online Ad is TAGGED.2. TAG identifies Toluna cookies of

people seeing the ad.3. Cookie includes Toluna universal

panel ID number4. The list with panel ID numbers + time

Ad to be measured

4. The list with panel ID numbers + time stamp and location ID is stored on the server

5. Toluna can append panel data to universal panel IDs.

Deliverables:

�Structured data report �Sample for pre/post tests

Custom Panel CommunitiesBuild or buy?

Since 2003, 120 clients using ‘Panel Portal’Advice – build something scalable!

Industries in time of changeLack of direct customer contactBrand advocacy and co-creationNo longer an early adoption tool– Build vs buy an easier choice

Summary

Social media applications – Benefits all stakeholders– Drives internal NPD – Reduces panel recruitment cost and increases member retention

Self-service tools open up research to a wider audienceaudienceNew channel – so mistakes will be made!Future developmentsSocial media hasn’t been a buzzword for Toluna –it’s provided competitive advantage

Thank youAny Questions?Any Questions?