Active lurkers – the hidden asset in online communities

February 18th, 2010 francois Posted in Hyper Social Enterprise, Interesting Links, Strategy, communities, social media, social networking | 37 Comments »

lurkersm Most communities have 90% of users who are lurkers – people who may consume things from the community, but who don’t contribute. Through our yearly Tribalization of Business Study, we found that many companies who run communities consider this a problem (30% of respondents considered it an obstacle) – and that of course is a problem all by itself.

You see, not all lurkers are created equal.

While it is inevitable that larger communities will end up with 1% of their members being very active users who provide enough value for the 9% of somewhat active users, who together provide enough value for the 90% of lurkers, the largest form of participation in online communities happens to be active lurking, which according to an MIT research study can make up 40-50% of your community membership. Active lurkers are those that may take something from the community and pass it along to others using different channels – so they participate in your word of mouth. Active lurkers also include those people who may visit a customer support community and find a solution to their problem without contributing to the community. Those people derive a lot of value from that community interaction and so does your company since they do not clog up your customer call center. Active lurkers also include those who will contact the original poster through a different channel, like telephone, email, or perhaps a face to face meeting – in effect continuing the conversation outside of the visible public side of the community, but not outside of the community itself.

Thankfully we found that 18% of companies who participated in the 2nd Annual Tribalization of Business are starting to track lurker metrics. It’s not easy to measure the impact of active lurkers, but without some sort of measure about their activity, you could miss a lot of the value that they bring to your Hyper-Social processes – especially in a world where the customer lifetime value is directly proportional with word of mouth activities.

When you think about communities, you need to think about the tribes and their members first, not just one of the public places (the online community forum) where they can interact with other tribe members. They will inevitably interact in multiple places, both virtual and physical.

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uberVU - social comments Says:
February 18th, 2010 at 6:36 pm

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by fgossieaux: New blog post: Active lurkers – the hidden asset in online communities http://bit.ly/9YiLa4…

Nancy White Says:
February 18th, 2010 at 9:57 pm

Long Live the Lurkers!!!

In your study, did you notice any different percentages in the type and size of communities. In my experience, larger, more “network like” configurations have higher lurker rates. Which is a blessing. Can you imagine if everyone in a 3000 person configuration was always posting? Mamma mia.

We don’t expect everyone to contribute (via speaking up) like that in a room, at a community gathering or in a crowd. So why would we online? It puzzles me that we expect this online, yet not in most large F2F groups. (I’m not talking about teams here, or bounded groups with explicit participation norms.)

There is also the pejorative language about contributing being positive, and consuming being a drain. It is not that simple. As you have clearly (and in my mind accurately) pointed out, active lurking has value, albeit hard to measure. In our work where we have the luxury of follow up, we do find that active lurkers gain value, even initiate and sustain behavior change when lurking in a learning community. Alas, few want to really measure and follow up! For understandable reasons. But I’m always amazed to run into someone years later who never piped up in an online interaction, only to hear how the interaction – as one sided as it appeared – changed their practice.

Thanks for helping bring the positive side of lurking into your network’s view!

francois Says:
February 19th, 2010 at 7:38 am

Hi Nancy — thanks for taking the time to comment on my post. We did not correlate the size of the community with the % of lurkers but from personal experience I agree with you that the numbers go up in larger communities. On the flip side, having that number in a smaller community would result in a near-dead community

I also could not agree more that lurkers derive value and also deliver value to the community – especially the active ones. In fact, and from a community point of view (not a place), they are not lurkers but active. They just choose different channels to interact.

–Francois

Tom O'Brien Says:
February 24th, 2010 at 11:35 am

Francois:

Another interesting post. We have done a lot of community participation analysis, and found some similar dynamics.

I’d like to add a couple of points.

1. The degree of lurking (read to post ratio is one easy way to look at it) has a very wide range depending on the community type. It can range from 100:1 (automotive communities) all the way up to 1,000:1 (financial services) depending on the type of community.

2. We have done segmentation of data by community participation roles (Mavens, Participants, Advocates & Newbies). Each of these roles has very different participation motivations, issues, motivations, drivers and questions. Understanding the details of each segment is critical if you want to engage with theg community in a positive way.

3. Many (or even most) vibrant communities are not company or brand owned, but rather owned by their own mavens. See http://www.howardforums.com for cellphones or http://www.priuschat.com for cars. Brands can support and participate in these communities, but they are well advised to understand the community motivations first.

In general the results of the MIT study are interesting and useful, but I would want to understand the particulars of a given community before engaging, because individual community dynamics, motivations and characteristics vary widely.

Tom O’Brien
MotiveQuest LLC
@tomob

How Communities Work Part II « A Human Voice Says:
February 24th, 2010 at 11:47 am

[...] How Communities Work Part II Another interesting post from Francois Gossieaux over at Emergence Marketing – Active lurkers – the hidden asset in online communities [...]

francois Says:
February 25th, 2010 at 11:23 am

Hi Tom — thanks for your thoughtful comment. I love how you are segmenting lurkers and was wondering if that information was public or not.
Let me know — francois

References on Lurking | Full Circle Associates Says:
March 29th, 2010 at 10:58 am

[...] Francois Gossieaux- Active Lurking [...]

Broad-Seeding, Dilution and the business I am in « Marenated Says:
April 27th, 2010 at 1:00 pm

[...] much time trying to make sure that I touch the “movers and shakers” in our space that I forgot about all the lurkers and people we have yet to make an impact on. Trust me, there are a lot of them. Shame on [...]

pligg.com Says:
May 19th, 2010 at 4:23 am

Active lurkers – the hidden asset in online communities…

What Most Online Metrics Won’t Show You Says:
May 25th, 2010 at 10:54 am

[...] estimates conclude 1% of community members contribute content. I believe this percentage is higher when we think of sharing links and other social behaviors, but [...]

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