WiserEarth Group Support
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Created: Feb 20, 2008
Updated: Nov 19, 2009
Membership: Open
Public
Asking WE members to make a step forward - message proposal
Alongside current discussion about messages to organizations, here is a proposal for a message to all WE individual members, targeted mainly at members with low activity and new members.
This is an early draft I hope will be improved by your contribution. The idea is to a little more pushy than we have been so far towards individual members, and get more involvment.
Comment welcome!
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Subject : Make a step forward in your WiserEarth involvment
Hello WiserEarthling
We are very happy to count you in the growing WiserEarth community of users, which is now strong of more than 20,000 members. Maybe you have done no much more so far than joining and adding or editing your organization details in the data base, and you wonder what you could do next. A long journey begins with a single step, and every new step is also a single step.
That's why we have come with this step-by-step guide to WiserEarth involvment, allowing you to figure quickly where you are now, and what could be your next step of involvment. We've tried to make each step as simple as possible to achieve and nevertheless important and rewarding both for you and the community. You are of course free to choose your way of involvment, and the order of steps given below is indicative. But if all new and not-so-new members took the time in the days to come to move a step or two forward from their current stage of involvment, the cumulative effect for the community would be impressive.
Step 1 : Register as a WE user.
Step 2 : Complete the "about" section, present yourself to the community.
Step 3 : Find in WE at least one organization you know of, check if its information is accurate, and correct/improve as needed.
Step 4 : Add to the data base 3 organizations you know of or are involved in.
Step 5 : Monitor organizations you are involved in, link them to your profile. Edit relationships to make clear how you are related to those organizations.
Step 6 : Add people to your network.
Step 7 : Join a group, get involved in the group discussion.
Step 8 : Add a resource to the data base : what have you read, seen lately that you wish to share.
Step 9 : Invite succesfully 3 friends to register as WE users.
Step 10 : Volunteer for an editor task.
Comments (1 - 9 of 9)
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I like the ideas of helping people to get more engaged with WiserEarth, but I'm concerned with the modes of communication used for this. You don't want to make people feel like they are being pestered at all.
The main goal, of course, is making WE more useful for people in competition with the rest of their lives. In other words, how do you get people to feel like any time that they spend on WE is time well spent? |
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Yes this would be best streamlined/integrated as users are drawn more into the different parts of and activities on the site. Steps should be kept to a maximum of 3 wherever possible.
Or, as Bret suggested, on a (longer/looong) FAQ page for people who fancy that kind of presentation. Here's something I did a while ago for such FAQ page. A list of activity types people can do on WE. Inspired partly by Bernard's suggestion here and on thinking about rewriting the main Tutorial page.
Here's an example of details for point no.2 2. Walk the Neighborhood
Would people use something as long as such FAQ/Tutorial page? Would you (Bret) like to help if we go with this? |
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I think we can subtly achieve the worthy objective of getting people engaged with WiserEarth through a number of prompts on the site itself and automated emails for example inviting people to relevant groups. The steps themselves are well worth considering as key adoption points.
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I must say I'm against this idea; it may turn more people off than on. Though I've never seen one, the news letter I think is enough. The above suggestions sounds like work to me. I assume the news letter is more about WE advancements and brief positives... Perhaps this information would be best kept as a FAQ or article: How Do I Make More of WiserEarth? or What Can I do for WiserEarth?
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Hi Bowo Happy New Year First Off,and thank you for bringing heads up to us non-tech. members of WiserEarth.org. I would like nothing more, than to make WE "shine as the diamond within the web rock quarry" LOL. I am trying to use all of your suggestions at my site- www.wiserearth.org/group/leland1- ,but I just learned of the WE Dashboard, how can I use it (please explain). My site is split between two main browsers(Google Mozilla and IE yahoo), is there any way to consolidate into ONE WEB SPOT??? Right now I sign into each spot with a differant user name and password, very confusing to me and others I'm sure. Thank you again for always answering our tech. questions and giving us new and fresh ideas. W.L.Luster/1-9-09 |
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Bernard,
Yes, once every six months may make sense. However, we need also remember that Peggy is sending out quarterly message blasts. So, we really need to be very considerate with messaging people as we wouldn't want messages from WiserEarth gets labeled as spam! Or, we can ask in advance whether new users would like to receive such periodical messages. Really like your point on "zillion small steps". Reminds me of related notions: "creating the path by walking on it" and "listening to what wants to emerge".
On "real photo": I'm well aware that most online communities thrive on just usernames, avatars, and virtual personas, instead of the real person. However, I'm thinking that WE can be different in that it really is a community of real people having fun in the real world doing real work solving real problems. The world needs seeing that there really are such people the world over, and wouldn't it be great if WE be a place where the world can meet such people? Thus, passport-style pictures probably won't cut it :) Where's the fun in that??
And yes of course, people can still opt to just use some catchy usernames, groovy avatars and fake personas. I can imagine this to be especially useful in a country where saying what you really want to say can get you behind bars, a.k.a. prison... or worse. That's the whole idea behind Wikileaks... ensure anonymity of whistle blowers.
On blank lines: Forgot how we are from different generations. Really am amazed to actually know someone who wrote with ink! :) Since we've gone digital however, I guess it won't cost us dead trees to add those blank lines ;-) Just want to go easy with my eyes... long paragraphs feels like heavy lifting for my skinny arms :) |
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Bowo
Indeed I had not thought about the "complete your profile" feature à la LinkedIn, and I agree it's certainly a better way to push members towards action, providing they connect to their WE dashboard! The message could be kept for users having been inactive for a long period (six months?), and maybe also for new members who have not gone further than simply register, after a week or so. But I would really like, whatever the form it takes, to stick to the spirit of the "small but visible steps forward", because it is the very spirit of WE. We have no Big Plan, no single way forward, we only need zillions of small steps, all of them useful and meaningful.
Regarding your requirement of a "real photo", which you also put as a requirement for editors, I'm not sure of the rationale. First, not sure waht a "real photo" means. Is this for identification? You don't want the kind of photo now required for biometric passports, as dull and blank as possible (no smile, no expression whatsoever), right? The images people choose are very much biased by the way they want to show on WE to fit the general community spirit, that is generally friendly, inspired, younger and nicer than they actually are. And when they don't find actual photographs meeting those requirements, they prefer a nice symbolic avatar. I don't see any problem with that.We had an amusing discussion about this in our Paris group meeting, where people had to admit that they would not use the same image for their WE profile and their LinkedIn profile, for example. The world is a theater, it has always been so in real life, and it gets worse on-line. OTOH I agree for asking people to be as clear and honest as possible regarding their real life identity and provide as far as possible clues such as personal web pages, publications, blogs, profiles in other communities, whatever one can reasonably trust. That said, you will never be able to avoid people to register under fake identities.
As for blank lines between paragraphs, well, I've started writing in the late 50's with this and that, and paper was sparse. I've written more with ink and paper than with computers. Maybe it explains :)
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Good idea Bernard! There definitely is this need to get users/members to at least finish step 2 on their first days here.
While a message like this will be needed to contact those inactive community members, not sure periodical mass-messaging is the best way to go. Another approach is to present these steps as something verifiable by the system and get's converted to percentage of "you're a 'full' WE member" now. (not sure 'full' is the right word, but something like it). This is the approach I see on some sites (LinkedIn for example). If you remember that new members get a red box on top of their profile page with a reminder to complete their profile, this process you suggest can be used to replace that red box.
This idea btw, is also running in parallel with the first section of the training course for editors (currently in draft and quite lengthy). The 10 steps you suggested here seems to address Patric's concern (see comment section of that page). Patric said "what is key is to move attention to actions within 30 seconds and learning processes to 30 segments that produce immediate tangible results to a current individual or organizational concern."
Might want to add upload real photo to step 2, and I would suggest that Step 7 be directed to the upcoming 12 key Earth-Charter-based groups.
Thus, I'm in support of this idea. Let's refine further.
P.S. I noticed that there's no paragraph breaks in most of your writing and comments (those blank lines between paragraphs which help increase readability ). Was this intentional? |
I think it would be good to have some standard info to refer to. I recently changed the status from COLD to COOL for engaging with new WE members. It would be good to have a link, so a short message to the new person could include the link to this info above. Sometimes I write a comment on their profile, mostly I write a private message of welcome, and invite the new member to select an AOF so that others can find them, maybe suggest a group of interest for them, based on their AOF if already there, or if they are really lucky try and conenct them with someone else in their region or with their interests.
I think it would be great to have some simple guidelines for non GenY members on how to find others and groups with similar interests. I think this aspect can be a little daunting for people, but once they find others with similar interests they start to get the idea of how they can make this place really hum along.
I know it seems self evident to all of us that all the Actions we might ever want to make on any page can be found in the Action Box. It wasn't until I was leading a face to face tutorial in WE that I realised that actually making the statement "Every action you may want to make on any page in WE is found in the Action Box - HERE (on the right side of the screen)" made a huge difference. Lightbulbs clicked ON in everyone's head. It might be somewhere else in here, but if not, then putting something like this in the first place a new member might look for ideas on what to do could be an idea.
How to use WE would be a great option for the Dashboard for new users? with an option somewhere to change this setting to What's New, Most Hits etc?