Online bulletin boards are a popular research technique that allows participants to answer questions and respond to prompts at their own pace in a collaborative, digital environment. They can be great for acquiring rich insights over an extended period and give participants the ability to go more in-depth with their responses.
However, keeping people fully engaged and motivated in an online setting can be a significant challenge that requires skill and preparation. If you’re thinking about implementing this technique into your research strategy, here are a few tips for keeping participants engaged during online bulletin board research.
1. Establish Clear Expectations
Before you begin, let participants know exactly what to expect so there are no surprises. Be upfront about the length of the study and what time commitments they need to make. Discuss the types of responses you’ll want them to give and any deadlines they need to meet. It may be helpful to organize this information into a welcome video or guide they can reference if they have questions.
2. Implement a Variety of Activities
Try incorporating a range of different activities to ensure participants don’t start to get bored and tune out. Consider using a mix of text responses, video uploads, and image collages to make exercises fun and encourage participants to use different parts of their brains. Utilizing gamification elements such as polls, quizzes, and interactive challenges can also be a useful way to make things fun and keep everyone involved.
3. Use Open-Ended Questions and Projective Techniques
Go a bit further than your typical yes and no questions or anything participants can answer with one word and encourage deeper responses by diving into the why or how. Frame questions to invite storytelling and elicit more personal responses (such as: Describe a time when…).
It may also help to use projective techniques such as personification to unearth subconscious feelings and attitudes (such as: If this brand was a person, how would you describe them?).
4. Create a Sense of Community
Do your best to make everyone feel like they are part of a community, not isolated individuals on the other side of a computer screen. Encourage participants to interact with each other’s responses through likes, comments, and discussion threads. Structured group activities or daily prompts requiring collaboration can also be a good way to break the ice and get people talking.
5. Be Active and Responsive With Moderation
With online bulletin boards, moderators need to be especially active and responsive to prevent drop-offs and keep the conversation flowing. Respond to questions as quickly as possible and acknowledge particularly detailed or thoughtful responses to encourage others to do the same. You may also want to keep an eye on anyone who goes silent and send a reminder or ask a follow-up question to make sure you don’t lose them.
6. Offer Enticing Incentives
Thoughtful incentives can be a great way to encourage participation and make sure everyone stays active until the end of the research. You might create a point system based on who provides the most detailed responses or participates most consistently and display the results on a leaderboard that everyone can see.
The prize could be a simple recognition of who stayed the most engaged or it could be an actual reward in the form of a gift card, discount, or product sample. Just make sure to clearly state the rules and potential rewards from the beginning.
7. Keep It Short and Flexible
Finally, if you want to ensure maximum participation don’t make the study any longer or more complicated than it has to be. Depending on the goals of the research, the bulletin board may last anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.
Make sure to pace it properly to ensure you get the data you need without wasting anyone’s time. You’ll also get more interest if you make it flexible so they can easily fit the research into their schedule.
In most cases, 20-30 minutes of active participation is enough to acquire plenty of data. Most people will be happy to commit this amount of time to the study as long as you let them do it at their own pace.
Successfully Conduct an Online Bulletin Board With the Help of New Perspectives
Bulletin boards can be a great source of information, however, they require skill and technical knowledge to implement successfully. If you want to include a bulletin board in your research strategy, New Perspectives can help make it a success. Our expert marketers have the tools and experience needed to moderate a bulletin board, interpret the results, and provide actionable insights. Contact us today if you need our help.
