Building online social communities: Helping your members cross the observer / participant barrier

This article follows on from our previous one ‘Long time listener, first time caller’.  In this article, we discuss what you need to do to foster and promote the necessary user behaviours within online communities to create a sustainable active community. We build on our ‘Observer / participant barrier’ model from our earlier paper to show you how to successfully manage your members as they start the process of engaging with your online community. We use strong social psychology models as a basis for the recommendations on how to work with your community and include a checklist of dos and don’ts.

You can find it on the PTG website under ‘Our Thinking’ and then go to the ‘Psychology / Social’ section.

You can also download it directly from here.

Let me know what you think in the comments…

Long time listener, first time caller – Why people do and don’t engage in a community

In this paper, we discuss the psychology of why people simply (and passively) observe a community while others actually participate and contribute. We discuss the process and decisions people go through when locating a community, choosing to sign up and participate in activities (e.g., sharing of information), through to becoming a ‘long time member’, or in some cases a leader (or super user) in a community. We present our ‘Observer / Participant Barrier’ model illustrating the critical leap people make to become active members in a community. Anyone who’s interested in creating a successful online social network /community should take a look.

You can find it on the PTG website under ‘Our Thinking’ and then go to the ‘Psychology / Social’ section.

You can also download it directly from here.

Let me know what you think in the comments…

Pick a sign, any sign…

My good friend Andrew Lizzio snapped this image for me on a highway turnoff just south of Cairns…Nice to know he was thinking of me on his holidays!!

A confusing mess of signs at a railway crossing on a highway turnoff, south of Cairns, Queensland, Australia

Does your NPS survey tell you exactly how to improve loyalty and referrals?

I’ve written a new paper on the PTG website.  In this paper, I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the Net Promoter Score. Its strength is in moving beyond satisfaction to loyalty and referrals. Its weakness is that like nearly all surveys I see, it provides no explanatory or predictive power. That is, you can have a good score or a poor score and not know why. Without this insight, you don’t know what to do more of, less of or differently.

This paper is Part 1 of 3 and starts with a discussion about the NPS and surveying, followed by Part 2, where I’ll show you how to design a rigorous causal survey. In Part 3, I’ll take you through how to quickly and simply analyse a causal survey using multivariate statistics.

You can access the paper from the PTG website, under ‘Our thinking’, in the ‘Psychology / Social’ section or directly from this link: How to make the Net Promoter Score truly actionable.  I hope you enjoy it.  Look out for parts 2 and 3 in the very near future.  If you have any views or comments about what I’ve said, please let me know…

Enhancing the UI design of iTunes’ ‘Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps’

In this first article in a new category of entries ‘Design it better’, I’m going to take things, usually websites or applications, I’ve used or seen that have potential, but could be designed in a better way.

I’m also going to provide an insight into some of the thinking that went in to the design enhancement so you can see why it was necessary. While the example is trivial and the solution obvious, you’ll see there are other solutions that could have been used, and why the selected one is better.

The first thing I’m going to cover is a new feature found in iTunes 9.1 called ‘Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps’.

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The Apple iPad: So close, but not close enough

Introduction

The iPad is both the best and worst kept secret to come from the computing powerhouse / genius of Apple.Like many, prior to its launch, I’ve been reading the various rumour sites imagining what it might be like, what I need from it and trying to discern fact from fiction.Now that it’s here, I’ve done a quick synopsis of what I think are its strengths and weaknesses based on the available Apple information.

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Lina: Promising write once – run everywhere

Developing applications for multiple platforms

The guys at Lina are promising write once – run everywhere, using the native look-and-feel of the host operating system. This was also the promise of Java, which also uses a virtual machine to run the binary code.

It certainly looks interesting, but the FAQ on the site says there will be a 2x performance hit (i.e. applications will run at half the speed of a native version). Other solutions, like using a VMWare, VirtualPC and Parallels for the Macintosh provide alternative approaches to running applications from one platform on another. These tools work best when the host operating system is running on an x86 processor, meaning that virtualisation speed is around 80% of the host processor – which is a very good level of performance. This occurs because the virtualised processor is the same as the processor and there is limited need to translate the instructions.

However, their disadvantage is that you need to buy the host operating system (e.g. running Parallels on the Macintosh requires that you buy MS Windows to run a windows application inside the virtual machine). This can be an unecessary overhead and cost on the end user.

There are also alternative to Lina, such as Wine, which allows a lot of compiled / binary Windows applications (including Office 2000) to run on Linux. If you’re writing your application in .Net, then you can also use Mono, which works essentially in the same way as Wine but is restricted to running .Net applications. Mono is a cross platform simulation of the .Net framework.

What next?

There are many different solutions available to creating an application and running it on multiple platforms – until there is a unified platform for computing where developers can write once and run everywhere – with the same version, no emulation and no virtualisation.

This is as close or as far away as the major players choose to make it, or until some truly disruptive technology platform comes along and reshapes the playing field. I have some ideas about this that are well into development…

Fujitsu P1610 ultra mobile tablet PC – A mobile winner

I finally got sick of lugging around my old laptop (Dell Inspiron 8600). Don’t get me wrong, it still is a great machine. The reason I bought it was for the massive 15.4 inch screen packing 1920×1200 pixels. I have very good eyesight and I could have three documents open side by side (e.g. two word docs and a visio or powerpoint file). But after a while, I got sick of its 3.5kg weight. My computer bag regularly weighed 7 – 9kgs after a few notepads, powerpack, mouse, iPod, etc.

I’d been doing some shopping around for a new sub notebook / UMPC. I seriously considered the new Samsung Q1Ultra, but finally settled on the Fujitsu P1610. If you’re in the market for a sub-notebook / TabletPC, I strongly recommend taking one for a test drive. Read on for the strengths and weaknesses.

(Images borrowed from http://www.fujitsu.com/sg/services/computing/pc/products/notebook/p1610/gallery.html)

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Managing for success (Part 7) – Thanking people with thought when they help you

On Friday I presented on my consulting work to the 2IC of the Commonwealth Bank. For those of you who don’t know, it’s the biggest bank in Australia and amongst the top 3 largest listed companies by market cap.

The meeting was with the 2IC, his direct team and peer team members. This was the elite of the Bank and it wasn’t just a little intimidating – it was very intimidating.

And one person in the room took it upon himself to say ‘Good morning, Craig’. Making a point of being friendly and acknowledging that we knew each other. He basically said to me ‘there’s at least one friendy in the room’.

Michael didn’t need to to this. There was nothing in it for him. If you read one of my other recent posts, you’ll see how important it is to do things because they should be done, not because you do it for some material gain.

My responsibility in this interaction is to ensure I thank him for doing it. And not just a quick ‘Thanks, Michael’ email, but one that describes that I knew what he was doing to help.

My email was essentially ‘thanks for making a friendly gesture in an intimidating meeting’. Being precise like that shows him that I put as much thought into my ‘thanks’ as he did in his initial gesture.

People like to be acknowledged for the things they do, especially when they don’t have to do what they did.

Managing for success (Part 6) – Doing things you don’t really have to

I was again talking with one of my students this week and we were talking abou interactions with other people.

The particular situation she was experiencing related to one of her lecturers. The lecturer is new at the game and was clearly struggling to gain the confidence of the students and conduct the lecture in a constructive and meaningful way.

My student described how the class was becoming very dissatisfied with the lecturer and were starting to behave in less then helpful ways. There was general dissent and the students were making it known to the lecturer. unfortunately, the lecturer responded in turn, and around it went.

It’s so easy to fall in behind group behaviour and be like all the others. It’s much easier to criticise than it is to help. And much easier to watch than it is to become actively involved.

Our discussion about this took the direction of what she (my student) can do to actually help the situation, rather than make things worth. The idea is that she can actually engage with the lecturer and provide feedback on how things have transpired and how things can b done better.

I know it sounds a little trite – you’re probably thinking that anyone would do that. However, what I’ve noticed is that most people don’t actually do it. It’s simpler and less threatening if you don’t start a conversation about difficult things – i.e. how to give someone constructive feedback when they’re doing a really poor job at something.

The point of this, is that instead of letting things be like they are, get involved, provide feedback, help out – even when you don’t need to and won’t actually gain anything from it. You do it, because no-one else will.

What’s the worst that can happen? They don’t listen, they get angry, they think you’re nosy. But now it’s actually their problem. You made the effort.

Don’t let it dishearten you. In the long run, you’ll make a difference. Most people like receiving feedback, especially when it’s done well. But that’s a topic for another day.

You’re probably asking your self what did I do to help. Well, I rang the Head of School and talked to him about the feedback I was hearing. I asked about how the lecturer was being supported and even made some suggestions about other things that can be done.

Again, what’s the worst that can happen? The Head says ‘thanks but it’s all in hand’. Nope, that didn’t happen. He understood my motive, took the feedback on board and gave me an undertaking to take an active role in supporting the lecturer. It turns out that he didn’t quite realise how things really were.

I would say that that’s a pretty positive outcome – I wonder what would’ve transpired if I hadn’t made the call. Who knows? But at least I did what I could.

Now, this post is not about being a martyr, or about how I’m a martyr. People who know me would never associate that word with my personality!!! The point is that I got involved when I didn’t have to.

It’s not about throwing your weight around or being a sticky-beak. It’s about genuinely wanting things to be different and if there’s an opportunity to make a difference to someone, despite the fact there is no material gain for me, then I think that’s a good thing.

Not everyone wants feedback, but that’s not your problem because you can’t predict whether someone will want feedback until you try. If you’re not sure, you can always ask them: ‘would you mind if I gave you some feedback on that?’ They’ll either say yes or no and you take it from there. If they say no, then you go about your business and work with people who are interested in getting feedback.

You can’t help everyone – work with the ones you can.