Beware the 90%-9%-1% Myth of Community Participation

Over the past year or two, it has been very fashionable for social media consultants to push the 90%-9%-1% community participation breakdown as the benchmark for all communities to reach or surpass. We’ve seen this statement be presented at the Community2.0 conferences, Forum One’s community conferences, in blogs, and now in a new site 90-9-1.com. While we do not doubt the sincerity of our competition in trying to develop a benchmark that is easy to remember and use, we do have an issue with this one.

Let’s start with the generalization across all communities and social media. Do active blogs and wikis really have 1% superusers and 9% active users who are adding content? I doubt it. Take out the company sponsor/employee who is employed to maintain the blog or wiki and the numbers drop in a big way. Most of the blogs we’ve seen metrics on in the B2B space have a ratio closer to 99-.9-.1. That’s a lot less than the ‘benchmark’ being touted as the industry standard. Go to any of the major blogs whose audiences are the high users of social media like AllThingsD or TechCrunch to see how low these ratios actually are. I don’t have the metrics, but a casual glance reveals that even at TechCrunch, the ratio is closer to the 99-.9-.1 than 90-9-1.

What about online communities? There again, the ratios are dependent upon the purpose of the community. With most community consultants failing to distinguish between a B2B and a B2C community, most advice provided is based upon B2C communities. But that is a major mistake. B2B communities are very different than B2C in terms of function, objectives, members, and participation. In our experience managing and measuring many B2B communities, the participation results are all over the map. One client offers an open B2B technology community with a ratio of 70-25-5. A previous client offers a closed B2B support community that achieved a ratio of 60-30-10. Another B2B client had a ratio of 98-1.9-.1.

Even the B2C communities we’ve managed have a different ratio based upon their targeted audience. AARP’s online community (that we are managing) currently has a ratio closer to 99.9-.07-.03. Using the myth of 90-9-1, this community would be considered a failure. But with a membership of over 800,000 new members in the past year and the demonstrated success in meeting the organization’s online goals, it is far from a failure.

Why is there a difference between what we are seeing and the myth of 90-9-1? Our experience has proven to us that there is no magic number to reach for when building and managing your community. Rather, the results are dependent upon several factors:

What are the demographics of your audience? Older audiences read more, participate less (with the exception of political communities and blogs). Male dominated audiences tend to participate at higher rates than female dominated audiences with the caveat that men usually try to dominate the participation in mixed audiences. Audiences who are more comfortable with technology will usually have higher participation rates than non-technology audiences.
What is the focus of your community? Support communities have much higher participation rates than any other type of community we’ve measured. General entertainment communities without a purpose usually spike, but then show declines in participation as they age (usually due to dominant members who use the community as their bully pulpit).
Are you B2B focused or B2C focused? B2B communities should have higher participation levels because members come to find information and build relationships with the company offering the community. If they find what they want, they return. A well run, facilitated B2B community will bring members back again and again.
What level of outreach and marketing are you performing? Unless your community becomes the next viral success, your participation rates are directly related to the amount of success you have in marketing your community.
How engaged is your organization in the community? In B2B communities, the higher the engagement of your employees, the more members will participate. In B2C communities, the moderators must be visible, yet not play in the community as members. They are the referees. When B2C moderators become too friendly with members in a community, new members see favoritism not balance. They then have a disincentive to participate.
How much content is available? Without content, there isn’t much to discuss.
Does your organization practice the “If we build it, they will come” method for managing communities? If so, your participation rates are doomed to be low (as will your conversion and other engagement rates). You must actively manage your community. We recommend personas as well as employees to demonstrate desired community norms and to establish the member to member interactions model for the community.

If you’ve read down this far, hopefully you’ll agree that the 90-9-1 ratio is a myth not reality. Where is your community with regards to this ratio? Does it matter? Not really.

What does matter is what are the measurable results for your community or social media offering. Are members getting what they need? Is that successful interaction benefiting your organization? These are the questions that are important, not a ratio.

We’ve helped many organizations achieve stronger results with their social media projects than they thought possible. We have created the best practices for B2B and B2C efforts that can help meet both the needs of your audience and your organization. We’d be happy to help your organization move beyond basic social media tactics to a more strategic method to engage members and achieve business results. To learn more, please contact us.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 at 11:54 am and is filed under Best Practices, Community Moderation, Measurement & Reporting, Social Media Trends. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.