The Power of Research Communities
When I first started working for Insightrix Communities, I never fully understood the power of communities, both in-person and digital communities. The more I started working on the research community software, the more I started noticing that communities were all around me. I was a part of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter which were all large communities, and within those communities I was a part of smaller sub-communities related to my interests. What I now realize is that communities have enormous power to spread ideas good and bad, and to influence our behaviour. It has never been more important for large brands to tap into the power of communities and use it to gather customer feedback and understand new trends.
How Aware of Trends are You?
YouTube is growing in popularity by the day, and the biggest demographic of adoption is among children under the ages of 13. The volume of content being shared daily is staggering, and the decentralization of power within media is also what makes the channel so exciting to young people. The shows, and hosts of the channel are just like the viewers, and the viewers feel closely connected to their favourite YouTubers. So what content is so interesting to these young viewers? Well Pew Research mapped out a list of the most popular YouTube channels (those with at least 250,000 subscribers) to see what type of content was being posted among these popular channels.
While YouTube is large in North America, Pew found that just 17% of the nearly quarter-million videos most popular channels were completely in English. They also found that videos aimed at children under the age of 13 were highly popular and received three times the view time. And while YouTube Kids has its own platform with strong parental controls, overall the highly popular videos among YouTube as a whole saw it’s highest watch rates among 13 and under.
Video Game Channels Highly Popular
Videos about video games were among the most popular genres of content both by total views and the amount of time watched. A study of key words found that videos with the words “Fortnite,” “prank” or “worst” saw five times as many views as videos that didn’t have those words in them. Another cause for increased views was cross promotion among other social platforms that drove traffic to these videos, such as Instagram, and Twitter.
The Future of Content
The way media is created and consumed and shared is rapidly changing, with some of the biggest changes occurring among 13 and under. The shows being created for these young people are largely done outside of the traditional media companies and seem to be more in tune with what the viewers are wanting to watch. Big brands take longer to conduct the research needed to stay on top of trends and understand their consumers, and the gap widens between viewers and decision makers due to age and interest. There has never been a time where research has been more important to understand customers, or future customers. We believe that market research online communities are the key to gathering data quickly in order to make rapid decisions needed to stay relevant to the youth.
If you are looking for a way to stay more relevant with your customers or future customers and are considering a market research online community please do not hesitate to contact us.
To learn more about what Insightrix Communities have been up to, check us out on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn!