Everyone has beauty inside of them, right?  It’s what my mother always told me, I believe it, and you should too.  So if none of us are ugly then why don’t you have a picture uploaded to online profile (kudos to you if you do have a picture – now get your connections to do it)?  It can make all the difference in the world.

A picture can lead to success.  People looking for other people online trust the profile more if a picture is present.  With many site profiles being viewable by the public, don’t you want to create that trust among potential customers searching for you?  This building of trust by showing your mug to potential new business relationships has been statistically proven, albeit in the most competitive field of all.

As discussed on this blog previously, economist Stephen B. Levitt, author of the books Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics, adding a picture to a dating site profile significantly increases the likelihood that person receiving a communication from would be suitors.  ”Of the many ways to fail on a dating site, not posting a picture of yourself is perhaps the most certain,” Levitt said.  ”A man who does not include his photo gets only one fourth the volume of email response of a man who does; a woman who doesn’t include a photo gets only one sixth the response.”  This means that a man who describes himself as low-income, balding, and overweight but who includes a picture of himself will get 24 email responses versus 6-email responses for a man who lists himself as high-income, full head of hair, and fit, but does not include a picture.  For a woman who lists herself as overweight, low-educated, and brown hair (a statistically less appealing color in online dating sites than blond) but who includes a picture of herself will get 24 email responses versus 4-email responses for a woman who lists herself as thin, highly educated, and blond.

Customers picking a business to work with are not to different than people looking for mates, especially when they are looking for professionals like doctors or lawyers.  The lawyer or doctor is someone they are going to have to work with through potentially emotional and difficult challenges.  They need to like that person and creating a connection online can start with the photo.

If 3 minutes could yield one new client would that be time well spent?  As the visibility of social and professional networks continues to rise on the open web, professionals with pictures have a statistically proven benefit of landing new relationships.  Those without a picture don’t stand a chance.

Celebrities love a good cause - Hurricane Katrina

I am a community manager for a niche network of legal professionals. Lawyers are tough nuts to crack when it comes to the social media game. As people who typically spend hours preparing any piece of writing, showing them the value of being in a place where they can have quick exchanges that develop into bigger ideas is not so easy.

Some of them “get it,” but as a whole the legal profession is still figuring out how these tools will be useful to them. Enter the celebrity lawyers. The guys who are well known in the industry, perhaps have written a practice area defining treatise, and are some of the smartest people you have ever met. How do you get guys like this to engage?

Again, it’s not easy.  These are people whose time is precious and expensive.  They are not really looking to chum around (generally) and want to make sure that anything they commit their time to has a payoff, whether it is money, recognition, or advancement.  Knowing how to motivate these guys is key.

There are generally four types of spotlight members categories which the celebrity member falls into.  Understanding what motivates them and their interests in the community is key to getting them to engage:

1. Fame Seeker – these can be members who are either on the up and up or who have made the big time and are looking to further enhance their personal brand.  For these members, maximum exposure will be the key.  Any opportunity you can extend that gets them visible, whether it is a professionally written article on the member posted on the home page or a webinar starring that member and centered around their work, visibility speaks to the fame seeker.
2. Problem Solver – these are members who like to be seen as the one who figure something out that no one else can.  They are motivated by a good challenge that is both difficult and which others want to solve but can’t.  Competitive opportunities like contests, puzzles, or hypotheticals can be a tool to engage this type of celebrity.  The bigger and more coveted the prize the better, but bragging rights are also attractive if the right people will see the results…
3. Networkers – these members are here for the connections.  They see powerful people in the network who they can team up with to either do things in the network or initiate side projects.  Since we are talking about celebrity members there is likely a lack of hesitancy in reaching out to other celebrities, but the more you can foster an ease of connection the better.  Try doing things like putting these guys on panels together, inviting them to high profile functions, and simply asking them who they are interested in meeting (sometimes you’ll find that one celebrity member doesn’t know another is even on the network).
4. Thought Leaders – I’ll have to admit, I find this term jargony and wanted to avoid it if I could.  ”Thought Leaders” are generally people who care about a topic so much they will lend their voice to it, often contributing original ideas. Partly for the fame and partly for the opportunity to influence others, thought leaders are motivated by opportunities to give opinions early in a debate.  Try inviting them to featured forum topics, either to start the discussion or give an early answer.  Also, see if they want to mirror an outside blog or contribute to a regular column that is featured prominently on the site.

Of course there is always the celebrity member that wants to just be left alone.  They may have joined the network as a favor to someone who runs it.  For these guys, I suggest working with them to understand their privacy settings and then helping them tweak those setting to be unreachable.  You can always periodically reach out to that celebrity member and try offering them opportunities you think they might be interested in, but when a guy tells you flat out he doesn’t want to be bothered, you energy is likely better spent somewhere else.

The user who is going to window shop in your community is either looking for something specific or just wants to see what’s there.  Much like real world shopping, if the user finds something of interest they will want to know more about it; pick it up, look at the price tag, and perhaps ask a sales clerk.  In the online world this translates to marking a collection or file as a “favorite,” giving it a rating or a “like,” and perhaps downloading it.  These are all behaviors that community management should be able to track and follow up on.

Depending on the size of your community it may be impossible to follow up on every member who downloads something, but for larger communities you want to look at files that get the most downloads and ask yourself these three questions:

1. Was there something about the content itself that had a wide appeal or lent itself to high download activity? – this could be a piece written by an influencer, hot topic, or something free that is usually offered at a price
2. Is there a similarity in the types of users that downloaded the file? – all from a similar profession or role in a profession, region, or other demographic
3. Is there a trend in the downloading? – all at one time, spread out over time, viral hits, etc.

With this information, you can then look to encouraging the posting of similar content in the future (if the file was user generated rather than community management generated).  Honing in on what your community wants is something you can do within this lurker behavior.  Also, if you can pinpoint individual users who browsed these collections (usually counted as “page views” in an analytic tool), you may be able to follow up with direct outreach too.  My suggestion though is to start with the numbers, encourage more content along the lines of what is getting the most eyeballs, and then follow up with more analysis.

As discussed in our last post, everybody lurks sometimes.  No, this is not a lurking version of an R.E.M. song, but rather a theory we are exploring.  There are 7-behaviors from from the IBM Research paper“We Are All Lurkers: Toward a Lurker Research Agenda,” and the first one we will look at is “Search & View.”

Search and View

What happens here?  A user searches for information in your community or on your site, examines the description of each result, and selects items that meet their search needs.  This is where SEO meets community management because any items posted by the community managers should be SEO friendly, taking into account the need for good meta descriptions (if available in your community tools), and at the very least, accurate tags.

That is what is in your control for creating a better search experience.  But how can you leverage search to engage your lurking members?

Create Easy Sharing Functions

One of the top behaviors found in the IBM study of lurkers who search and view files is they forward and share them with others.  Providing an intuitive and easy means of sharing the files in the community will encourage this activity.  Here are a few other tactics in community design and functionality which can lead to engagement opportunities from this lurking behavior:

1. A “wall” or “feed” entry whenever someone accesses or forwards a file (make it clear that the user can also hide this information).
2. Easy commenting and rating functions – this is an overlooked contribution by lurkers which can add tremendous value to your community.  Encouraging this behavior and rewarding it with either incentives (ex/ points) or suggested content based on similar ratings and context should be pursued.
3. Bookmarking files – a function to bookmark files that are found in search.  This is a function just below downloading, but allowing lurkers to place a marker on such files will encourage them to come back and further engage in the content.

Publish Community Findings About “Most Viewed” Files

There are three pieces of data which can be invaluable for understanding search behaviors among lurkers in your community:

1. Most frequently searched terms – tells you what people are looking for in your community and provides you with the opportunity to encourage and facilitate more content that fits that subject matter.
2. Most frequently downloaded content – hones in on the above factor and tells you about individual content contributors – who is the most popular user, i.e., the one who’s posts are downloaded or clicked through most frequently.  You can use this as bragging rights in your community if you publish these findings.
3. Users Who View, Download, and Forward – if your community reporting tools let you get this granular, gathering data on the users who most frequently view, download, and forward files will tell you about potential super users.  These users are engaged and showing signs of life, only they are being quiet about it.  Try some direct outreach to see if they are interested in contributing anything.

Never under-estimate the power of bragging rights.  I used to play video games on XBox longer than I would normally just to unlock achievements (in game awards) and boost my gamer score.  Publishing data on who’s files are highest rated, most downloaded, etc. can be a competitive, addicting, and motivating force in your community.

As the largest user behavioral demographic in any web community, lurkers present untapped potential and opportunity.  Sean Weigold Ferguson on his blog post Bridging the Gap Between Lurkers and Influencers, says that focusing marketing efforts on reaching out to the passive user can have greater effects than engaging a well-known influencer.  Typical web marketing seeks out the influencer first, in the hopes they will be able to engage the passive user through an online version of the trickle down theory of engagement.  In practice, the influencers seem to attract more influencers or wanna be influencers, which still comprise that active minority.  So how does a community leader or business go about engaging this seemingly silent majority?

We will discuss tactics in the next few posts all designed to answer that question.  Before we proceed with any of them however, it is important to note that we are all lurkers.  We discussed this concept in one of the first posts on this project.  There is also a brilliant paper written by Michael Mueller, David R. Millen, N. Sadat Shami, and Jonathan Feinberg from IBM Research, called “We Are All Lurkers: Toward a Lurker Research Agenda” which expands on this theory, (you can access the paper in the Lurking Library of this blog or from it’s original place online).

According to the IBM paper, there are sets of behaviors that all users engage in, which can be classified as “lurking” as well as another set of behaviors which demonstrate engagement:

1. Search + View summary metadata about a file + Download.  This factor appears to represent the “core work” of lurking.  The user searches for information, examines a description of each search result, and downloads selectively the items that satisfy his/her search
2. Browse lists of Collections of Files + View the contents of a single Collection.  Users who engage in this factor are focusing on collections of files as a means of finding their desired information …
3. View files shared/recommended by particular other users. This factor is the result of active social recommending, in which the lurker is responding to personally-targeted recommendations from a particular other user.
4. View files shared/recommended as a group (involving multiple users). This factor initially appears to be similar to the preceding factor.  What distinguishes the two is a matter of scale.  The preceding factor occurred within specific pairs of users – i.e., within the context of a particular dyadic relationship.  By contrast, the group-oriented factor involves sharing/recommendations by potentially large numbers of other users.
5. Respond to emails that shared/recommended a file.  This factor appears to be a form of direct acceptance of a sharing/recommending action, without any preliminary step of pre-examination of the description of the file.  In effect, Lurkers in this factor are uncritically following the instructions/proposals of other users.
6. View information about another user and her/his actions.  In this factor, users explore the attributes and file-sharing behaviors of other users.  This could be an antecedent to sharing or responding.  It may also be part of a more general set of social networking behaviors
7. View files via a remote access (i.e., through an API). In this factor, the Lurker performs direct file access from a separate application.  This factor is similar to the Respond to emails factor above, insofar as the user can see relatively little descriptive information about the file, but simply downloads it on the basis of the context in which its link appears (e.g., a blog)

Over the next few posts we will look at these theories and develop tactics around each one that you can use in your community or business to activate the silent users.

On this topic of revised pyramids, check out this inverted model on the conversation pyramid:

We will discuss this further in another post (I have to go clean the house for Shabbat now).

In his book Freakonomics, author Stephen Levitt did a study about honesty and transparency.   Looking at dating sites, Levitt found that most people on these sites embellished when it came to describing themselves in terms of economic status, physical attributes, and other qualities.  Levitt found that members who included a picture on their dating site profiles experienced more success in getting email responses than members who did not include pictures but had more “appealing” profile descriptions.

“Of the many ways to fail on a dating site, not posting a picture of yourself is perhaps the most certain,” Levitt said.  Something about the photo, even if it is not a photo of yourself, enhances the profile and makes people respond.  “A man who does not include his photo gets only one fourth the volume of email response of a man who does; a woman who doesn’t include a photo gets only one sixth the response.”  This means that a man who describes himself as low-income, balding, and overweight but who includes a picture of himself will get 24 email responses versus 6-email responses for a man who lists himself as high-income, full head of hair, and fit, but does not include a picture.  For a woman who lists herself as overweight, low-educated, and brown hair (a statistically less appealing color in online dating sites than blond) but who includes a picture of herself will get 24 email responses versus 4-email responses for a woman who lists herself as thin, highly educated, and blond.

What works for dating sites can be applied to any community.  Pictures change the online experience by putting a face behind the profile.  Also, they are one of the easiest ways to engage in a community online.  It only takes a few minutes to select a picture you like and upload it to your online profile.  The hardest part is probably picture selection, but once you find a picture you like it is suggested to use that same picture across all of your online profiles.  Besides being easier than selecting a new picture for every profile, this also helps create personal branding, which allows people to more easily recognize you across communities.  If you have pictureless profiles and find that you are having a hard time engaging in online communities try uploading a photo and then expanding your network.  The exchange has a statistically better chance of generating a response and you will feel more engaged in the community yourself.

Start with three questions: (1) what do you love doing? (2) what are the reasons you love it? and (3) how can you use what you love to solve a need others have?  Let’s look at the first one.

(1) What do you love doing? Don’t think too hard on this one.  Love does not have to be some unattainable standard that only romantics can reach.  I’ve seen guys who love washing dishes, gardening, and accounting.  Some people love sticking their fingers in peoples mouths (in the industry we call them “dentists”).  The key here is to find something you have an aptitude for (naturally gravitate towards and have basic proficiency in) and then look for the aspects of that thing that really engage you.  Focus on these attractive aspects as you develop a plan to “cash in on your passion” as Gary Vaynerchuk says.  Just like in real life, not everything about your chosen area will be a knock out, but you need to find the parts you do love and run with those.

(2) What are the reasons you love it? List them out on a piece of paper.  Don’t edit, just list, list, list.  Chances are you can come up with twenty or so reasons before you start to repeat yourself.  These are your first 20 posts.  The amazing thing is that as you write and deliver on your blog, new posts on topic will generate themselves.  Again, the hook is that you love it.  As you engage it starts to build itself and take on a momentum fueled by your passion.  If you feel like stopping, just make sure it isn’t what Stephen Pressfield calls “The Resistence,” what Seth Godin calls “The Lizard Brain,” what I call “The Challenge” stopping you from delivering.  A good way to test it is to force yourself to show up through The Challenge.  If you go for a long period of time, feeling no joy in what you are doing anymore, chances are it is time to find a new gig.  And the beauty of the Internet is you can go ahead and start it and always come back to the old one.

(3) How Can You Use What You Love to Solve a Need Others Have? As you generously give your gifts of love and passion to the world, sharing in your niche corner of the web, try to think of how what you are sharing can be of a benefit to someone else.  While this principle is taught in Marketing 101, so few traditional marketers naturally think this way.  They look at product first and think about fulfilling needs as a result.  Turn that equation around and your are giving something of true value.  You are no longer telling the market what they need but answering them.  It is the way businesses and blogs should be run.  Doing otherwise is self indulgent.  So look for ways that your passions help others, whether that is sharing fly fishing tips (the need for recreation), talking about chair exercises (the need for health), or expressing your love for the Sunday comics (the need to laugh) keeping your potential niche readers in mind and how you can help them will make your blog a more engaging piece of content.

After you have answered these questions to your satisfaction, get going!  There are over 3 billion people on the Internet waiting to read your stuff.  If you got 0.01 of them to read your blog you’d be a millionaire.

Tell me if you’ve experienced this scenario.  You have an online community that is growing in membership.  A few superusers have surfaced and these people are posting some great content.  Regardless, the goose eggs are stacking up in the comments column and you have no idea why.

Even the most commented communities experience the goose egg phenomenon.  Managing an online community combines art, science, and social skills.  There are no hard fast rules.  Trial and error is a watchword.  Even with such esoteric odds, research shows that 25% member engagement per month is a healthy metric for a community.

This means that about 25% of your active user base makes themselves visible in some way – not just logging in, but actually doing something that is traceable and visible to the community operations. This could be posting a message or leaving a comment, or even responding to a newsletter.

“Looking for a sign of life.  Looking for something to help me burn out bright.” – Foo Fighters, Learn to Fly

We use the term “lurkers” on this blog.  It has a negative connotation that we want to change.  Still, people understand what a “lurker” is.  Plus it’s more edgy than the politically correct and more accurate term “Active Reader.”  When looking for a sign of life in your community know that logins, votes in polls, and “liking” posts are all signs of life.  The question for community managers is how do you turn those blips into a pulse?

Social Engineering – Take a trip to Disney’s Magic Kingdom if you want to see social engineering in action.  Everything about the park is designed to take you through the Disney experience the way they want you to go through it.  As you enter the park, something stimulates you to get your heart racing.  It leads you to an activity.  Then a bench to sit on and collect yourself.  The smell of food hits you reminding you to eat.  At the food stand an add for a grand attraction tells you to trek to another area of the park.  As you embark on the next leg of your journey a garbage can is conveniently located a certain amount of steps away from the food stand where you took your food to go.

Disney’s  design is no accident.  They know where they are bringing you.  An online community needs a similar path.  You should have a clear map of simple and important goals for users.  Then move members through the life cycle.  As they progress, reward them handsomely (or at least creatively; some of the best incentives are not tangible).

Tactics – When it comes to tactics there are no shortage of suggestions.  Check out Vanessa DiMauro’s recent post about the 4-Stage Model for Member Engagement.  She talks about Engagement Resources such as “launch guides, welcome kits, official greeters, suggested content … member-to-member support and leadership, intermediate member recognition incentives and rewards,” and many others.  What I want to talk about here are risk levels for member participation.

Like the Disney map, you want to move members through different risk levels of participating in your community.  Start by encouraging low risk activities like voting in a poll, rating or liking a post, and adding profile pictures.  After a member develops more of a relationship to the site try to move them to mid-risk activities like commenting on an uploaded file or blog post.  As the member gets more comfortable in the community reach out to encourage a more high risk activity like a guest blog post or leading a forum discussion.

Tactically speaking you want to do three things in leading them through the theme park that is your community:

1. Provoke and stimulate curiosity
2. Ask questions
3. Articulate growth steps

What are some of the tactics and approaches you have used that work?  How have you socially engineered your community?

I am a procrastinator.  When I creatively procrastinate it is even more amusing, taking on too many projects, making too lofty a goal, and setting myself up for failure.  This is the Resistance.  It sets play dates with my ego, sets me up for non-failure (you only experience failure if you do something), and frustrates any goals I have.  The key to beating the Resistance is using it to beat it at it’s own game.

You will feel the most resistance about the things you most want to do.  We spoke the other day about the difference between should and must.  The Resistance uses shoulds to kill your musts.  Ever thought about embarking on a career as a photographer, trying to get paid taking pictures, but then tell yourself you’d be crazy to give up your corporate job?  Resistance.  Ever thought of selling t-shirts on the beach in Cancun and living a simple life, but then told yourself you’d be crazy to leave that teaching job?  Resistance.  You get the idea.

Am I telling you to be irresponsible and drop everything to follow your dreams?  I don’t know.  You have to decide what works for you.  But I am saying that if you truly want to accomplish something online, whether it is keeping a regular blog or becoming a recognized leader in an online community, the only way to get started is to get started.

I have a friend who is a really bright guy.  He has fantastic ideas about how lawyers can make a practical transition into social media that will benefit their practice.  He told me these ideas and tactics over Starbucks one day, sitting on some stone benches outside Rockafeller Plaza, where he was set to present to the senior partners of his very large law firm about this very topic.  The passion he displayed in talking about this made his regular M&A work (mergers and acquisitions) look like an afterthought.  He told me that he had wanted to blog on this subject for some time.  I asked him why he didn’t just do it.  He told me that he was getting his thoughts together and would launch the blog in time.

This I didn’t understand.  The very form of the blog is a work in progress.  The beauty of the blog is that it is a “web … log” allowing you to log your ideas in a public forum and have them develop in a way they never could in isolation.  Here was a guy talking about changing the legal industry but not willing to take the first steps himself until he was ready.  What was holding him back?  Resistance.

Don’t believe the voice that is lying to you.  Comment on what see.  Get involved.  Risk ridicule.  It will be worth it for you to make a difference rather than being an anonymous sideline player.  Who knows?  Perhaps the public forum will take your work to exactly where it needs to go.