Online community management provides a richer social experience for online panelists. It discusses how online behaviors are changing as people spend more time on social networks. Traditional survey methods are becoming less effective with lower response rates. The presentation introduces Toluna.com as the world's first online social voting community, which harnesses social media to drive engagement. Key features include personal profiles, member polls and debates, and real-time results. Benefits are outlined for panelists, agencies, brands, and Toluna. Challenges faced and lessons learned are also reviewed. The social model informs new product development and reduces costs while increasing customer insights.

1. Online community management
A richer social voting experience for
today’s online panellist
Mark Simon
Managing Director Toluna UK

2. Agenda
Purposes of online community
Panel industry challenges
Creating the world’s first online social voting
community
Toluna.com
– Community features
– Benefits for all stakeholders
Social media driving NPD
Summary

3. 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
– 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

4. Meanwhile with research panels...

5. 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

6. Reliable survey completion
Model needs to evolve
Panel
Internet Communities
Traffic
Online
Panels
Email
Lists

7. Online Research Communities
Key Characteristics
A platform for social interaction & engagement
– Explicit research aim
– Blind or branded
Allow 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’

8. Online Communities
Uses for research?
“Traditional” social networking sites or blog
Specialised websites for bespoke interaction on a large scale
VIP communities

9. Harnessing social media to drive the next
generation of online access panels
Toluna.com case study

10. Toluna.com
1st 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:
– 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
precision

11. Toluna.com
Creating a community...not just membership
From 10,000 members in 1 country in 2003 to...4 million
members in 34 countries in 2010
30,000 polls created a month by members
600,000 opinions posted a month by members
Average time on site is 12 minutes per visit
“Do you Recycle
“Will you buy the to feel less guilty
new iPad? about the
environment?”
“Smokers, thinking
about quitting, if so “Do you do your
how?” weekly food shop
online?”

12. Toluna.com
Member page
Public profile
Activity stream
Auto-generate
relevant topics
Users following and
followed
Users can message
other users

13. Toluna.com
Survey page
Win points only

14. Toluna.com
Member-created polls
Creating a Poll

15. Toluna.com
Live polls appearing on site

17. Toluna.com
Topics – user-generated debate
Post comment or agree /
disagree Toluna Status
Ranking
Users rate each other

18. Toluna.com
Results
Number of votes on Toluna.com March 2009
20,000,000
18,000,000
7,288,603 votes
16,000,000 by members
Total number of votes
14,000,000
12,000,000 March 2010
10,000,000
17,513,596 votes
8,000,000
by members
6,000,000
4,000,000
2,000,000
H2 2010
0 1 million votes
daily

19. What’s in it for...
Panellists Agencies
Social reward Pre-screening / cost benefits
Financial reward Incidence & feasibility checks
Informational reward Reach niches groups rapidly
Product testing Add value / colour to pitches
Meet new people / groups Sense check ideas
Brands Toluna
Brand advocacy Reduced panel recruitment £
Co-creation Increased member LTV
Pre-screened customers Profiling depth
Engaged product testers Pick up tough projects
Reduce NPD cycle New products / revenue streams

20. Challenges we faced
Usability – keeping it simple
Scalable – many thousands of simultaneous
users
What 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

21. Social Media Model
How it informed our NPD

22. Polls
3 levels of participation
4 million members worldwide
QuickSurveys
Sponsored Polls
Quick Votes

23. QuickSurveys
Harnessing 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
5 key data points
– Census rep algorithm
– Fed directly from Toluna panels
Harnessed community traffic
– 100-2,000 responses in hours
– See results live

24. Toluna.com
Case 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
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

25. The Results
Toluna providing research platform
Campaign Results
2 surveys attracted over 34,000 respondents & 11,500
product test registrations
28 product reviews published on Toluna.com. All content
optimised - product listed on Top 2 natural search results
on Google
423 unique visitors from Facebook to toluna.com opinions
Business Results
Philips gained No.1 market share position in Oct - Dec for
steam systems
Product sales +33% on previous year during same period
Market share +14% Oct – Dec 2009 Vs 2008

26. Measuring Digital Ad Effectiveness
Via Toluna.com traffic
1,000,000+ panellists tagged
1. Online Ad is TAGGED.
2. TAG identifies Toluna cookies of Ad to be
people seeing the ad. measured
3. Cookie includes Toluna universal
panel ID number
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

27. Custom Panel Communities
Build or buy?
Since 2003, 120 clients using
‘Panel Portal’
Advice – build something scalable!
Industries in time of change
Lack of direct customer contact
Brand advocacy and co-creation
No longer an early adoption tool
– Build vs buy an easier choice

28. 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
audience
New channel – so mistakes will be made!
Future developments
Social media hasn’t been a buzzword for Toluna –
it’s provided competitive advantage

29. Thank you
Any Questions?