Since the emergence of social media and online communities in business, there has been a debate surrounding member contributions being the most important metric.   By that, I mean success is often tied to the frequency and number of posts, comments, or rating by a member.   

Within any community, including ours for environmental professionals, there are many member types.  Some that are very active are referred to as “super users” and there are members who just read but who do not participate who are often referred to as “lurkers” to social media professionals.    The reality is no matter how good the content of any community is the vast majority of people that visit a community, are the lurkers. 

Next month, I have been invited to participate at the SXSW Conference, the premier Digital and Interactive event in Austin, TX, to talk share insights from commonground and from my past.  I will defend the honor of lurkers on a panel titled Lurkers, Your Most Important Community Members.  Some of the panelists and social media experts do not feel that members categorized as lurkers add value.   I completely disagree.  

Why Social Media Lurkers are Valuable

The word lurker is harsh.  If you are in a group setting, there are always a few people that are more outgoing than others.  If you are in a learning setting, a small number of students typically ask the instructor the majority of the questions.  If you are in a large meeting, usually one or two people do most of the talking.   If you are working as a team on a project, one person generally presents the findings.  Do we call those people who don't talk lurkers? Why should we expect the dynamics of an online community or social network to be any different?

The vast majority of the members on commonground don’t participate nearly as often as we would like.  That is why we strive to improve user experience, add entertaining and relevant contests, and deliver value to members every day.   When we asked members, 75% indicated they visit commonground at least once every couple of weeks, and many of them visiting daily/weekly to keep an eye on what is happening.  The 21,000+ posts and comments have come from a smaller percentage of overall membership, and even though that percentage is well ahead of industry averages, it is still less than 10% of the overall membership.   Why?   In addition to the fact we are busy, our personalities are different.  Some of us are outgoing, some of us are not at all, and some of us are once we become comfortable with the environment.   In other words, we gain trust.   Many members come up to me in person and say they love the community, and one day they hope to be comfortable enough to post.   To me, that is perfectly fine and comes with time.

I could provide countless reasons why community members who have been members for years create value for the community at large.  However, I would prefer to showcase one example.  Commonground has been around since 4/08.   Just last week, a member who had never posted anything since joining in 2008 posted a question.  Six members who had collectively been members for an average of a year and a half, all jumped into the conversation to help the member out and it kicked off a great discussion that is still going strong.  In fact, it is tracking to have more participation than any other post on commonground. 

As members of any b2b community continue to get more and more comfortable with social media, I suspect many members who have been sitting on the sidelines are going to jump into the mix.  Their insights, contributions, and participation will help other members out.   And, if a member decides to never contribute online, there are plenty of other ways they will drive value such as refer their peers at work to join, forward content to help someone in their office, go to a meeting to discuss environmental standards and regulations with a better understanding of the issues, etc...  Plus, they push community administrators to make sure that every single day, they keep focused on delivering valuable content to increase the likelihood for engagement and participation.

What naysayers need to do is stop being so metrics driven on member contributions and map things back to overall goals and objectives of your initiative.  If a company is exceeding its goals and delivering something your members tell you they feel is very valuable, then you are on the right track.

What do you think?  If you were on this panel, what would your position be?  Are the so called “lurkers” not valuable, or do you agree with me, that they can be some of your most important community members?