Our BlogMR tool has long been the cornerstone of the the FlexMR Community Suite. Including blogs in your market research community has the ability to turn a panel with a survey and maybe a forum into a community by giving users space to engage around the research topic in a self-directed way, share details of their lives (which makes blogs great as a ground-up customer ‘listening’ tool) and also to interact and socialise with fellow community members.
This is key in building a strong community who you can turn to for idea generation, testing and validation. In fact, the BlogMR tool was one of the first tools we added to our online tool kit back in 2007. Here at FlexMR HQ we’re always seeking to innovate and develop our online platform.
Our Latest BlogMR Update Includes
- A new look for the customer-facing blog area
- A new moderator area, which allows you to:
- The ability to see how many users have made blog posts
- Tools to invite users to make blog posts
- Blog post categories
- A way to mark unread blog posts
- Tools to prompt users privately on their blog posts.
- The ability to manage blogs easily with in-situ admin tools.
BlogMR Management Best Practices
So how do you use community blogs in an effective way? Here are our top tips to make your FlexMR blog area more productive:
- Blog yourself to set the tone and ensure that users know who they are talking to.
- Encourage users to respond to blog posts you have made.
- Make friends with your members.
- Ask questions - and follow-up questions (even if it is ‘and is your dog feeling better now?’) to make users feel valued.
- Categorise posts so users can find their area of interest (and you can organise your analysis!).
- Encourage blogs around similar themes - for example ‘this week we would like you to tell us about your summer holidays’ - a great use of the categories function!
- Keep the tone friendly; make it fun and light-hearted - this is community members’ space, for socialising and building strong community links.
What are your top tips for promoting engagement around blogging amongst community members? It would be great if you could share your ideas with us here.