I do a lot of thinking about what it takes for people to join a community. EndUserSharePoint.com is one of the biggest on-line SharePoint communities in the world and the video embedded below explains how that can happen to your in-house projects.

Understanding motivation is a critical factor when it comes to changing people’s habits. How can we make it so that people will not only use what we have, but participate in the process. Dan Pink, presenter of The Surprising Truth that Motivates Us, says if we’re trying to incentivize, trying to “buy” motivation, it won’t work. He validates his theory with scientific research.

I find what he has to say edifying on two fronts. First, people who write for EndUserSharePoint.com don’t get paid. There must be some other incentive that drives their participation. It’s not just recoginition either, although they do get a large audience to view their ideas. The critical aspect that motivates people to write is that they get to choose the time, the place and the subject. It becomes a passion and we are just the outlet for that passion. That can be through becoming a regular contributor on the site, or through participating in Stump the Panel. The motivation is that it’s a choice and it’s fun to see your ideas exposed.

The second interesting part of the community is why people participate through the comments.

Research shows that 90% of your (blog) audience will NEVER leave a comment. You can offer rewards, you can offer incentives, you can buy them dinner… nope, thank you, I’m not going to make a comment in public.

9% of you audience will occasionally comment if the subject is something so close to their own interest they can’t help but participate.

The final 1% of the audience is what I like to term “evangelists”. These are the people that help spread the word, that will stick with you when things go a little wrong, and even criticize on the back channel if they see you going astray. That’s how I found out that EndUserSharePoint.com was losing focus. The evangelists for EUSP started coming to me, saying things like “I send people to your site all the time, but recently they’ve been coming back saying that can’t find anything that’s relevant for them.”

Ouch, that hurts, but it’s making a huge difference in how I’m starting to manage content on the site. What would make people who don’t even know me offer help and encouragement? What motivates them to participate in the community we’re building here? That’s what I think about everyday.

As a SharePoint Site Manager, you might start thinking along the same lines: What am I doing to motivate people to use my site? How am I encouraging them to participate, not just be consumers? Is there a project I can ask for help on that will be interesting enough that people will want to participate.

As an example, in an upcoming article, I’m going to ask for community participation in creating a SharePoint Community Wiki that will define all of the default web parts. I’ve tried, and a couple other people have tried, to create this alone, but it is just too big a job for one or two people. It seems much more reasonable to let the community help build the project. We all use the web parts in different ways, so not only will we get generic descriptions of the web parts, but the community will help supply use cases on how they’ve used them for internal projects. Motivation for participating? “Hey, look what I was able to do!”

Let’s get back to the playfulness of building community, of discovering solutions. Let’s create a playground that has enough space for everyone who wants to play, and large enough to hold anyone who wants to stand on the sidelines and watch. Lurkers, which I don’t consider a derogatory term, are part of the community, too. In fact, they are the largest part.

I’m putting this video up for two reasons. Dan’s message is solid and I really believe it.

Also, TheRSA.org way of presenting information is pretty inspiring. When you watch this, think about how much more powerful the message is than if they’d used a simple PowerPoint deck.

TheRSA.org team has a series of videos like this, that are just knockout ways to present information. This alone is worth an entire post… creating compelling presentations, but I’ve got to get back to building my community.

Thank you for participating, and I mean that sincerely. It’s what keeps me, and the contributing authors, going.

Regards,
Mark Miller
Founder and Editor
EndUserSharePoint.com