Sponsor Advancements in technology, plus a vast increase in the amount of time people were spending online, only served to make online communities even quicker and cheaper. However, the set of circumstances established by the pandemic, globally, has presented an opportunity for the customer-closeness benefits of communities to return to the fore. What Covid-19 has done, I think, is make a lot of organisations ask themselves if theyre really that well connected and, if theyre not, how they are going to come out the other side of this, says Lawrence. In broad terms, an online research community is a digital platform where people are invited to interact on a variety of tasks over a period of time, which could be anywhere between one week and a few years. The size of the community can range from 10 people to thousands, though a typical long-term community, says Lawrence, has between 1,000 and 10,000 members. These members are sourced either from a brands existing customer database or recruited from a panel based on certain criteria having a pet, for example. (See boxout, Managing a successful online community.) Typically, InSites Consultings communities include residents (a core target audience that is always present in the community) and visitors (sub-targets recruited for specific studies). One of the companys clients, confectionery giant ondel , set up its community in , when a change of leadership led to a push to put the consumer back at the heart of its business. Malakai De-Morgan, shopper insights manager, confectionery, orthern urope at ondel , says the business saw a community as the perfect way to keep tabs on the UKs snackers. It is now one of the businesss most-used insight tools. The richness and number of reactions we can get, Managing a successful online community In May 2020, Explain Market Research Content: content should be weekly, brought together nine moderation daily, and always customer, employee and stakeholder meaningful organisations including clients with online communities in a virtual close the loop to make engagement Recruitment: define our environment, to share best practice recruitment key performance ingredients in building and managing on recruitment channels, and ensure and identify the most important a successful online community. he findin s ro its re ort, Online communities: for research and engagement, can be summarised across six key areas: indicators (KPIs) and strategy, decide the strategy is always on Rewards: do not assume that one si e fits all the member a e re ards bes o e to Moderation: a moderator should let conversation bet een e bers o naturally and provide the space to allow that to happen Embedding the community: always think about the online community when working in and on the business. What is the latest news, what can be shared, and what is important to report back to colleagues? KPIs: be clear what you would like to report on at the start what is important to your organisation and set the KPIs to track your progress. 22 Impact ISSUE 31 20_pp20-29_Report.indd 22 22/09/2020 16:03