Friday, February 26, 2010

Entrepreneurial Principles: Loyalty and Passion Builders

Loyalty

Loyalty to an online recommender community is similar to the feeling of kids who incessantly want to go back to the same playground. Here are few items that you might consider:

Watch us grow page

Make a map. When a new member join, put a little pin on his/her location. Constantly update this page and you will see how much/how fast your community grows.

It is important to create a sense of ownership for the members. When making a map, consider the types of members. For a general public, a map might be divided into provinces. But if the members are mostly from universities, each location might represent a university.

Every member gets his/her own websites


Give every member his/her own customizable web page. Upon logging in, bring the member to his/her page.

Every member gets his/her own identifiers

Identifiers are things with community's logo on it. Examples are hats, wristbands,  mousepads, notepads, prepaid credit cards. Again, engraving the member's name on identifier will help increase the member's sense of ownership. These identifies could be given when the person signs up for a membership.

Members are searchable by victory

Points and/or achievements should be given to members who do good deeds, and they can be used to earn an elite status in the website. Good deeds are, for example, writing a report rated great by other members, catching another member doing a bad thing (e.g., speaking untruthfully on behalf of product vendors), recruiting a famous person to represent the comunity.

Lockers and Closets

A locker is a private storage that no one else can enter. Members can use it to keep secret stuff such as story, password, kudos, newsletter, special email, avatar outfit, etc.

A closet is a public storage for a member. It is the place to store things that members are willing to share with other members. These things are, for example, points, tip jars, etc.

Award status

Make a hierarchy ranking. Award can help elevate the members' status. Member can earn awards by 1) bring in new members, 2) participating in product testing requested by the community, 3) , 4) Story-telling contest, 5) Introducing strategic partners to the community, 6) getting a publicity for the community (e.g., getting a place for a community in the TV).

The unexpected reward

Give out rewards (4-5 times a year) to members without telling them in advance. Announce the award in the newsletter. This can be real money.
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About the summary: It takes time to finish up a book. And, when you do, sometimes, you want to review what you learn from the book. If you do not make notes as you read, you might have to go through the book once again. This can be time-consuming when you are dealing with a book. But you can still flip through the book and locate what you are looking for

However, when the material is an audiobook, it is extremely hard to locate a specific part of content. Most likely you will have to listen to the entire audiobook once again.

This book summary will help solve the pain of having to go through the book all over again.

I am leaving out the details of the books. Most books have interesting examples and case studies, not included here. Reading the original book would be much more entertaining and enlightening. If you like the summary, you may want to get the original from the source below.


 Source: Social Network Business Plan by David Silver, Chapter 5

No comments: