Frictionless Participation

David CarterCTO & FounderAwareness Inc.

Blog: http://carter.awarenessnetworks.comTwitter: dkrcarter

Who the heck is David Carter?

• Co-founder of Awareness• Based at our Canadian office near Toronto• Have been in the content management space since end

of 2000• Prior to that Microsoft for 11 years

> Internet Strategy Manager > Product Manager for IE3, IE4 in Canada (don't blame me)> Lots of other stuff…

• Housekeeping for non Canadians> "aboot"="about"> "Eh" means "don't you agree?" or "what do you think?"> E.g. "This is going to be a good webinar eh?", "How's it goin eh?"

© 2008 Awareness

Great Customers

Participation

• Reading - Passive > Very little feedback> Doesn't influence the community> May not even need to be logged in> Skim along the surface> Not a bad thing

• Participation - Interactive> Dive in> People interact with the site> People create content> People interact with each other> People update their profiles

> It's a great metric to build an ROI statement

Defining Successful Communities

• Reading - Linear

• Participation - Circular> More participation drives

more content> More reasons for other

people to visit> More visits means

more potential participation

> Rinse and repeat

Participate

Consume

Consume

Friction / Engagement Scale

Most Engaged

Least Engaged

Manage a Blog

Manage a Topic

Create a Wiki Topic / Start a Group

Write a Guest Post

Participate in a Wiki/Group/Discussion

Post a threaded comment

Leave a comment

Vote / Rate / Bookmark

Most Engaged

Most EngagedLeast Engaged

Create a profile

Edit/Update a profile

View

Friending

Tagging

What customers do you think are the most valuable?

Most Engaged

Least Engaged

Most Engaged

Least Engaged

• You know the most about this group• They help create a bigger footprint• They can drive the direction of the

community

• They consume

Easy Participation - Voting

• Voting is simply a reaction to some content• Easy to do.. One click• Can influence the positioning of other content• Can add context to content

• Don't think of it as simply "rate this post"> "mark as a favorite"> "was this post helpful?"> Or very purposed towards the category of content

> "rate this best practice with respect to ROI"> "Choose this article for the 2008 end of year summary"

• You can treat "reading" as an implied vote

Voting is great for sites with very little UGC

• Add context to company information or product info> "great product for teens"> "rate the kid friendliness of this product"> "this product was easy to install"

• Voting doesn't replace Survey's and Polls because it is targeted towards a piece of content. It is a reaction

• Bookmarking is really a kind of "voting" isn't it?> Tag it and you added context

Profile Polling

• In the past Profiles were private, now they are content

• Doesn't it follow that profile questions could be asked in the form of a quick poll?> Share it as a profile item

(with their permission)

> Display the aggregate results

> Capture the info for every single person

> Dead simple

> Find people who feel the same way you do

> You don't "profile the heck" out of peoplewhen they first register

Show the results as you would a poll

• However, clicking that data could show you members

• Basically each interaction contributes to the complexity of your communities Social Graph

Friending

• Friending is participation• It is a great point of participation because there is an

implied context of "trust"• Make the friending process simple

> Add this author to my people-list

• Quick Discussion of "People-Lists"

Using Points of Enthusiasm

• Opportunities present themselves that communities may already be enthusiastic about. Use those to gather content and broaden people's profiles

A Specific Topic> A company meeting> A company social event> A community happening / news event

> See Boston.com and see if there is any interest in the celtics today

A Process> A direct email campaign> A registration> A contest

Create a purposed "Quick Post" form to make participation dead simple

Comment / Threaded Comments

• Discussion Forums are the original community

• Next easiest participation because you still "react" but you have to formulate a thought

• Threaded comments are a little more engaged because people can "react" to your comment

• Make everything a discussion

• We even have a widget for SharePoint content and script to capture discussions in your existing CMS systems

Imagine the interesting Aggregations

Content

Bookmarks

Discussions

Wiki

Calendar

Voting

Profile

Reputation

Participation

Profile

Groups/Friends

Presence

Photos

AudioVideo

ClippingsVoting

Play back the content in many ways

• As a profile / blog > Show posts> Votes> Comments> Profile questions

• As a category of content> E.g. Marketing, Sports, News etc.

• As a result from community interaction> Highest voted> Most commented on> Most recent

Reputation can grow based on participation

• Every interaction paints a picture

• How people vote on that authors content• How that author votes• Where they submit content (what categories)• Who their friends are?• Where they hang out?

• My twitter experiment.. Small world

What you should do next

• Evaluate if your site (or plan) includes lots of frictionless participation> How can you lower the bar of entry

• What are some obvious "Points of Enthusiasm" that you need to exploit

• Call us and we can help you get started

Questions?

David CarterBlog: http://carter.awarenessnetworks.com

Twitter: dkrcarterEmail: david.carter@awarenessnetworks.com