Understanding uses and gratifications of opinion leaders of virtual communities

Now that I have completed my research study, I'll spend the next couple of weeks blogging key findings. The full research paper and presentation will be available in January. So let's start of with a brief overview of the research findings, beginning with uses and gratifications.

The study identified a wide range of uses and gratifications of online opinion leaders:

• seeking unlimited information


• collaborating with others by either sharing or learning information


• connecting with others who have similar interests across geographic boundaries


• artistic expression to a wide audience


• facilitating relationships formed offline


• documentation and archiving


• convenience and efficiency


• no time constraints

What does this mean to the PR practitioner? These Web 2.0 uses and gratifications should be considered when planning campaigns to effectively communicate with online opinion leaders. For example, understanding that online opinion leaders value collaboration, public relations practitioners should be more open with information online and allow users to create solutions based on this information. Rather than protecting organizational information, PR practitioners should share information online to obtain and ultimately incorporate the feedback provided by this key public.