“Hi, my name is MrCucumber69, I have a gray blob for a face and that’s all I care to share about myself – will you be my friend?” Silly as that sounds, this is the way users of many social web applications greet each other. It’s not very useful or inspiring.
Communication works better when you have a good idea who it is you’re talking to. How can new online services get users to describe themselves, though? – ReadWriteWeb – Eight Ways to Get Users to Fill Out Their Profiles
ReadWriteWeb’s article describes a common problem on social networking sites – getting users to engage and fill out their information (let alone post and contribute). Their suggestions mostly depend on the functionality of the social networking software, but here are some ideas from a community evangelist and internet marketing viewpoint:
- Reach out – If you greet new users and make them feel welcome, they are more likely to put the time into their profile and the community. Reaching out to users who haven’t updated their profile can have a similar result. Sometimes people just need to feel a
- Highlight – By highlighting changes and updates that are made on profiles throughout the site, people may be reminded or enticed to update their own profile (people love to be famous)
- Feature – Choose some interesting profiles to feature on the social network to showcase good profiles – sometimes people just need a good example.
- Recommend – Recommending people to each other based on their profiles can be a powerful way to get people to connect. For empty profiles, make note of this possibility for when it is filled out.
- Entice – Sometimes good old marketing schemes like free giveaways are the only way to get certain people off the couch. Offering a discount or freebie from your business may be relatively cheap way to accomplish this.
Getting people to fill out their profiles is important not only from a business standpoint (yours), but also for encouraging new people to join. People will be reluctant to contribute or give you information if they community does not seem to be active. You may need to recruit some go-getters to help you get things rolling.
If you have ideas or ways that have worked on your own social networks, we’d love to hear about them in the comments below.
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