Girls in telco communities

[drolcak]

I have not noticed such a topic yet in our community so I am very curious about your point of view.

Subject: girls in telco communities
Current situation:
1. The community exists about 1.5 years
2. The team creating the community consists of the same guys (as I think, it can have a meaning :))
3. The most active users are 100% guys themselves
4. Women write very occasionally and there is currently no potential for being a super user

What I'm wondering about:
1. Is the current situation normal in other communities?
2. Do you try to profile campaigns / campaigns for eg women when creating promotional campaigns / community management?
3. Other ideas for attracting women to the community?

I invite you to exchange views

[SheenaK]

I'm a woman managing a telco community, and our demographic is 48/52 women to men, so only a slight lean towards men.

I notice that men post a lot more and are more likely to try and help, and women are more likely to give kudos or an opinion based answer.

For example, if someone asks "should I get this phone", the men will give an answer based on specs, whereas the women will talk about their experiences with the phones.

This is, of course, a huge generalisation, and does not speak to every experience.

I would suggest more subtle invites to engage, like a poll. Or seed opinion-based questions, such as asking how your members feel about a new promotion, product or service. Share your most recent TV or billboard ad and ask if people have seen it, and ask for their opinions.

By steering the conversation away from tech and towards emotional engagement, you should see an increase in activity from other demographics.

[Kronshage]

Interesting question @drolcak. 

Similar to @SheenaK, my team has witnessed very similar behavioural patterns on our community. 

While we don't have targeted campaigns to encourage members of a specific gender to participate, we do actively engage existing members on our community on regular basis. 

If you are looking to increase the participation of you female members, one of the things we do on our community is send a welcome PM to new and/or high potential members. My team will introduce all of our Community Managers, but also engage in a conversation by asking them a bit about themselves, why they joined the community, etc. This relationship building activity has been incredibly successful in increasing participation from both genders, but it has also given us incredible insights into the intrinsic motivation of our members. 

Once you understand the motivation of your existing female members, it should give you a few ideas about how to attract more new humans. I do like @SheenaK's idea about polls or proactive feedback campaigns though. 🙂

[DanK]

Most of our superuser program are blokes, and most of them retired to boot. But we do have a couple of ladies and one who identifies as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. This still means our group of top users is 70% men 😮

Honestly, it seems (stereotype incoming) that guys are more likely to voice their opinion on absolutely anything and so our more active members tend to be male.

[drolcak]

Great discussion and advices so far , thanks for your input @SheenaK, @Kronshage, @DanK

We will try to test them in practice 🙂

Just checked demographics and it seems almost the same as yours @SheenaK -> 45/55 women to man