In Part 2 of my “Elements of a Vibrant Online Community” series, I presented the people-oriented factors of audience segments and user types as critical components of a successful online community strategy. In this blog entry, I will provide practical examples of these two factors.

For audience segments, consider the pyramid model (below) that is frequently used for marketing campaigns and evangelism initiatives. The levels in the pyramid are mutually exclusive, and in general, there are far fewer people near the top of the pyramid than those near the bottom. The benefit of utilizing this segmentation model is that you can design different engagement programs and allocate appropriate resources to each segment. For instance, you would probably allocate more senior/executive level interactions with Advisory Councils (ACs), Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs), or other elite customers and partners, compared with other segments lower on the pyramid. Moreover, your goal for this top audience segment might be to achieve and maintain a shared vision for business problem(s), whereas your goals for other segments are much less tightly connected. Before you attempt to develop your own model for audience segments within your community, check with your marketing team because it’s very likely that they already have a model, which you can reuse or refine.

For user types, consider the ladder model known as Forrester Social Technographics (below). This model was originally introduced in April 2007 and recently updated with the addition of the Conversationalist profile. This model and its user type profiles are very similar to those of the Telligent Analytics user types (also shown below), which I had blogged about previously. In both models, the profiles may overlap – that is, a user can be categorized as a Connector as well as an Answerer. To achieve and sustain vibrancy in different types of communities, different combinations of user types are required. For instance, a product review community (like http://epinions.com) would tend to have a much higher percentage of Critics (in Forrester’s model) or Commenters (in Telligent’s model). In contrast, a product support community (like http://windowslivehelp.com) would tend to have a higher percentage of Creators (Forrester’s model) or Askers and Answerers (Telligent’s model). Telligent is currently working on assessing the benchmarks of user type ratios/percentages for vibrancy in different types of communities, and I look forward to presenting and discussing our findings in the future.

Of course, the key differentiator for the Telligent Analytics model is that user types are analyzed and derived easily based on data from Telligent Community or Telligent Enterprise.

Forrester Social Technographics Model for Social Media or Online Community User Types

Telligent Analytics Model for Social Media or Online Community User Types