Forum Content Creators Also Wield Influence Offline: Survey

A new user survey finds that people who contribute to online forums– those Web sites where users can post questions and thoughts for response and comment from others– tend to be much more engaged than the average online visitor in both Web and non-Web activities that can influence their peers, from posting online reviews to planning offline meetings.

The survey was conducted by market research firm Synovate and PostRelease, which operates a platform that lets marketers integrate their messages into Web forum content.

Conducted last November among 1,000 Americans, the survey asked them to look at a list of activities that might help others make purchase decisions and select the ones in which they participate. Across the board, people who contributed to online forums showed themselves more active in influencing others’ buying choices even off the Internet.

For example, 79% of those uploading forum content said they have helped a friend or family member make a purchase decision, compared to 48% of those who said they don’t submit content to forums. And 65% of forum contributors said they advise people offline and in person based on what they’ve read in forums. By comparison, only 35% of non-contributors report disseminating online forum advice to their real-world friends.

And while almost 36% of contributing respondents say they have gone to real-world gatherings or meetups to meet other forum members face to face, only about 14% of those who do not contribute to forums can make the same claim.

In fact, about 19% of forum contributors play an active part in making those offline F-to-F encounters happen for their online groups–something only 2.4% of those who don’t contribute to Web forums can say.

The study reveals that one in five Americans contributes content to online forums. That’s intriguingly close to the estimate by Forrester Research of the proportion of American consumers who read online forums (28%).

Taken together, those separate findings—28% content readers and 20% content creators—would seem to contradict the long-standing wisdom that a relatively small number of users generate the great mass of social media content on the Web.

Other findings from the PostRelease/Synovate survey:

• 66% of forum contributors post online ratings or product reviews; only 17% of non-contributors say they do the same.
• 20.6% of forum contributors also produce a blog, as against 2.4% of non-contributors.
• Almost 44% of forum contributors share links to articles about or reviews of new products , compared to 12% of non-contributors.
• And almost 60% of forum contributors have actively recommended—online or offline– that someone buy a specific product or service, compared with only 12% of non-contributors.

“Forums are essentially online gathering places for people with similar passions, so it’s natural that their passion would extend beyond the forum’s virtual walls,” PostRelease president and founder Justin Choi said in a release. “The people in forums are often discussing specific products, sharing advice and asking each other for recommendations. For marketers, participating in that discussion is not quite as simple as jumping into a forum conversation—forums have rules about that.”

Choi’s company sells a tool that lets marketers search for relevant threads in Web forums and post non-respondable messages that are consumed as content, not advertising, and containing links to drive traffic.