What does it mean to be an onlooker? 70% of buyers have chosen your brand before you know their identity. Are you ready for that reality? How does our invisibility or anonymity change when we think about online (URL) vs real life (IRL). Do we think of lurkers differently than lookers?

Do we have a positive impression of lurkers. Are they Free-Loaders in our minds? Being a Lurker is far from free. Lurking is a time investment. We make lurkers work pretty hard. All that content skimming comes at a price. Of course you could work to simplify the like of a lurker. Forget Klout what your lurkability factor. How easy does your brand make it for lurkers to get close.

Just to level set, let’s be clear we’re all lurkers.

There, you can relax. We’re all safe here in our shared anonymity. We all should have no expectations.

Lurkers has become a hip and trendy term. People know they are lurking. It’s a badge that people wear with pride.

Window shopping for ideas, content, products or services has always been just fine. The internet should not change that. I know plenty of people want to go Cookie and IP Address mad. We can build technology to by pass that and consumers can hide behind a privacy shield.

We’re simply playing an intimacy game of cat and mouse. Call me old fashioned I somehow like the romanticism of outing a lurker by fair means not foul. I don’t want to tag you. You can declare yourself when you are ready. There’s lots of ways to contact me. You can follow me on Twitter or Listly or sign up for my blog or make a list.

At #IMS12 I recall a stat

 

70% of the buying process in a complex sale is already complete before prospects are willing to engage with a live sales person – SiriusDecisions

Lurking is highly contextual. Our lurking preferences are highly niched.

We are insanely selective how and when we out our preference.

According Internet Culture,  1:9:90 is a ratio that describes our behaviour  A staggering 90% of us are lurkers. It makes total sense. We couldn’t all contribute all of the time. It would result in chaos.

I’ve gathered a lot of research on lurking on this list.

Feel free to add other content if you follow the topic

Lurker Research: Are You a Lurker and the Collapse of 1:9:90

Listly by Nick Kellet

Lurker Research: Are You a Lurker and the Collapse of 1:9:90

Lurking fascinates me. I lurk. We all Lurk. Then sometimes we participate. This lists collects research on lurking

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1. 

   How to Get Lurkers to Engage | Heidi Cohen

   While most people don’t want take an action for a wide range of reasons, marketers want lurkers to engage whether it’s with their website, content marketing or social media initiatives. (Here are 21 reasons people lurk.) Here are three lurker corollaries to help you consider how lure lurkers to action and five ways to get lurkers to engage.

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   Social Media Lurkers—Who Are They and How Can You Engage Them? - CASE Social Media

   Are you discouraged because you have tons of followers, friends and connections on your social media communities but conversations always involve the same people? Do you wonder why others don’t jump in? You are not alone. There’s a name for this phenomenon – the 90-9-1 rule.

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   Building Community: the Platform Blog - Lithosphere Community

   Dr. Michael Wu, Ph.D. is Lithium's Principal Scientist of Analytics, digging into the complex dynamics of social interaction and online communities. He's a regular blogger on the Lithosphere and previously wrote in the Analytic Science blog. You can follow him on Twitter at mich8elwu.

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   The 90-9-1 Rule in Reality - Lithosphere Community

   Dr. Michael Wu, Ph.D. is Lithium's Principal Scientist of Analytics, digging into the complex dynamics of social interaction and online communities. He's a regular blogger on the Lithosphere and previously wrote in the Analytic Science blog. You can follow him on Twitter at mich8elwu.

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   The Economics of 90-9-1: The Lorenz Curve - Lithosphere Community

   Dr. Michael Wu, Ph.D. is Lithium's Principal Scientist of Analytics, digging into the complex dynamics of social interaction and online communities. He's a regular blogger on the Lithosphere and previously wrote in the Analytic Science blog. You can follow him on Twitter at mich8elwu.

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   How Can I Push You From Lurker To Participant? | Outspoken Media

   I left my first comment on Chris Brogan's blog a few weeks ago. And if you want to know a secret, I was scared. Speaking up for the first time on a new community is often pretty intimidating. Don't get me wrong, I've been reading Chris' blog for years, lots of us have.

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   11 Ways To Get Lurkers To Participate - The Online Community Guide

   Richard Millington is the founder of FeverBee Limited, an online community consultancy, and The Pillar Summit, an exclusive course in Professional Community Management. Richard's clients have included the United Nations, The Global Fund, Novartis, Oracle, OECD, BAE Systems, AMD and several youth & entertainment brands.

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   Heli connecting ideas » Blog Archive » Nomad, migrant, lurker, blogger or networker?

   This time I'll put myself on a web participation map by using some blog posts that have touched me. First I take a post of Wolfgang Greller. He considers himself as a veteran moocer, a migrant that comes again and again, and seems to enjoy the way he participates.

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   Commenter or Lurker: Which Blog Participant Are You? | Ari Herzog

   In his evergreen 2006 article about user participation on online communities, Jakob Nielsen theorized that 90% of participants are non-contributing lurkers, 9% contribute now and then, and 1% of users are active, as popularly illustrated with this pyramid: I believed that lurkers don't like the stigma and want to be shown the way.

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    Why Collaboration Fails And How Gamification Can Help

    I had the pleasure to speak at GovCamp Singapore, on 18 November 2011, at the Rock Auditorium, at Suntec City Mall. The title of my talk was The Game of Collaboration: Why Collaboration Fails and How Gamification Can Help. Here are the video of my talk and the slides.

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For those who consume, those who act and contribute help to filter the noise. Non-lurkers help lurkers sift through the noise.

That said, getting lurkers to de-cloak and engage is the goal of every marketing dude on the planet.

Just because it’s our goal, does not make it the lurkers goal. Far from it. This is not about us, it’s about each lurker and what they need. Delurking is simply a non scalable task. It’s highly personal. Delurking is very intimate. It’s trust exercise.

Every prospect arrives at your site knowing something different.

They each arrive with their own unique lifetime of perspective.

They come with baggage and we need to be ready, willing and able to accept them.

If you answer their needs, if you pique their interests, then you may just succeed in changing their status.

Wouldn’t that be fun on Facebook to have a relationship status with each brand. “Just Lurking” would be the first and the default option. Liking a brand does not break your lurker’s virginity. Facebook has managed to make that experience such a light touch that it carries no real meaning of value.

How many times do you hear people say “I’m just lurking”. Oddly that’s much more commited than “I’m just looking”, which is in response to a direct approach like “Can I help?”. We’ve all learned to thwart retail sales people. We cringe when we cut them off, but it just becomes a necessity of modern living.

People offer up “I’m lurking” when they crave an invite. It is the statement a lurker makes when in no-man’s land. They way be willing to the join conversation, but they don’t want to work too hard. They are giving you the tiniest thumbs up, the mildest signal of interest. You simply need to wave the white flag and draw them into a conversation.

Lurking is much more than the internet equivalent of “Just Looking”.

In the real world we can decline people’s advances. We can do that online too. We can bypass or decline people’s attempts for us to sign up and capture their oh so valuable email address. We can sidestep the “Talk to an agent” option. We’re adept.

You can ignore them in that moment when they say they are lurking, or make a joke. Have fun. Welcome them.

You can do it wrong. They can quickly withdraw.

Often all it takes is a simple welcome. They’ll take off their jacket and grab a drink and sit down and join the conversation.

All we want is a word, a sound, a signal. As marketers, we want an invitation. We want to know the light is on, there’s someone home and there’s a spark of interest. That’s all. Just a spark.

We use the metaphor conversation, because that’s all we want. A chance to talk.

Lurkers can feel like free loaders, but let’s be honest, we’re holding the party in their name. We’re here to entice them. Often times all the people that are talking are selling something. The real paying customers are often hard to spot. Conversation often takes place between vendors or experts. It’s a funny little dance.

Lurkers are who we’re targeting. It’s just easier to admit that’s our goal. Call a spade a spade. Name the elephant in the room and move on.

What do you feel when you lurk:

• You are curious
• You have question
• You need information
• You are just not sure
• You don’t want to spend all day.
• You don’t want to get trapped.

What do you feel when you are a lurker?

• Discomfort
• Ignorance
• Curiosity
• Impatience
• Vulnerable
• Needy

We always wonder if this is my sort of thing? Are these my kind of people? Am I making a good choice? Is this really what I need.

Often we lurk when we are preference forming. Preferences aren’t born fully formed. They arrive in pieces and we assemble them like an Ikea shelf. When all the pieces fit, we come out and express a preference.

Think about how you came to pick your neighbourhood, your car, your Kid’s school. It’s very hard to tell an honest tale. We get our sequencing wrong in our mind. We cite facts when it’s often emotion that got us looking for facts to back up and support our desires.

We only express when we are willing to share. That’s an important line. Sharing is commitment.

The act of sharing a preference validates us as individuals. Sharing an experience connects us emotionally to the memory. It’s like we make the moment more important. We are wearing a badge.

Sharing an experience is more than a like, sharing an experience makes it part of our story.

Sharing internalizes a concept and embeds it more deeply into our internal preference graph.

Sharing also possibly flushes out more friends who like the same things. We don’t really want to like anything alone. We want our friends to be like us – for right or wrong.

So what is your brand doing to make your story worth internalizing? What makes you worth sharing? Why will your former lurker’s friends want to care about you too?

Brands are the one that need to stop free loading. Loading stuff on consumers for free. Brands are the ones who’s job it is to entice us and make us care. The onus and the effort here is placed firmly on brands.

Brands need to figure out their story. Figure out the layers. Don’t tell the whole story. Find the hooks that entice the lurkers to ask for the next hook. Rinse and repeat.

Metaphorically brands are throwing parties and expecting people to turn up and participate. And there’s too much talk about the brand’s needs (to sell more product) and not enough about the lurker’s needs (to solve problems).

Sure individuals chose to unlurk, but brands create the space that makes that works for us.

• Brands fill in our knowledge gaps.
• Brands show us how normal our needs are.
• Brands prove to us that there are others like us.

What are you doing to let your prospects unlurk and dare to express a preference?

What are you doing to speak to the lurker? What are you doing to get more lurkers to ask that first question. What are you doing to make them want to share.

The lurkers call all the shots: make sure when they’re ready to fire, they aim for you. Today they do all their homework before you even know their name. Be ready for their advances. They don’t have to remain invisible.

Lurkers like it that way. We can embrace this reality or fight it.

I’ve no doubt in my mind which type of company will win. How about you? Do you think about lurkers enough?

Image Credit : vonschnauzer

PS I’ve written more on lurkers. Follow the links on this list.

Nick Kellet (142 Posts)

Nick is co-founder the social curation platform Listly, that combines crowdsourcing, content curation and embedable lists to drive high-level community engagement, live inside your blog posts. Connect with Nick on Twitter · Linkedin, Facebook and G+ and follow his writing via his other guest posts and on his blogs at NickKellet.com and blog.list.ly