Let’s imagine you’re walking down the street in a fairly busy neighborhood full of restaurants (Boston’s North End comes to mind first for me, but you pick the location…).  All of the restaurants look to be fairly decent, so you start to look for differences in other ways.  If you’re anything like me (and most people), you’ll probably avoid the empty restaurant assuming the lack of patrons is a statement on the quality of the food…

The “empty restaurant syndrome” is pervasive, especially in online communities.  To avoid this, it’s important to have a critical mass of seed content prior to launching any online community.  This is especially the case in market research online communities, since they are slightly less conventional than traditional online communities.  Don’t worry if it’s just “filler” activity at first – it just has to be something to get people talking to each other.  Depending on who you talk to, the rule of thumb is anywhere from 4-5 posts per high-level forum topic area, but will vary based on your community size and audience.

We also recommend a “soft launch” for most MROCs, whereby you invite a handful of members first and then slowly roll it out to your entire group of recruited participants.  That way the late arrivals will feel like there is something of an established group once they arrive.

These are just two tips for anyone planning to launch their own MROCs on the PluggedIN Platform.  Think of these ideas as this “virtual” way to avoid the empty restaurant syndrome.  Anyone have other tips to share?  Comments are open!