DtT Ch 3 and 4

Why build social networks and communities?

1. To enhance and sustain your intellectual capital: by being in a certain community, you can gain information from well educated and intelligent people, as well as share your own knowledge with other members of the community
2. To increase creativity and cross-fertilization: online communities allow for communication across all different cultures. This creates a less biased account of information because it comes from a variety of perspectives.
3. To preserve institutional knowledge: an online community creates a place where knowledge can be stored and people can easily access it.
4. To provide higher quality interaction with your organization: people are able to come together to talk and share information when one physical time and location is hard for everyone to make.
5. To improve retention and loyalty: an online community provides support for employees, users and clients.
6. To reduce training and support costs: in an online community, users can share ideas and support with each other, allowing for the company to reduce costs in customer support.

Remuneration

• the commonsense observation that individuals remain members of a social network when there is a clear benefit of doing so. People need to feel like they are getting something out of a social network in order to use it.
• Online communities must offer users an experience.

Remuneration Techniques

1. Make the text editor fun; add emoticons
2. Use a subscription application form
3. Mentors Teach
4. Seed the Discussion
5. Use stars on messages to show membership contribution levels
6. Rank the value of members' messages
7. Remove the fear factor by providing examples of how to participate
8. Create a safe environment by sending out "tickle" messages
9. Create a regular event
10. Don't automatically archive
11. Discourage attempts to send conversations to other blogs, web sites, or discussion groups
12. Ban redistribution servers and cross-postings