PETA2
Lessons Learned
- Share control. In social networking, you must be willing to let go of some of the control over content. Allow your supporters to generate content so that they act like participants rather than a passive audience.
- Relax. Your space in the social-networking world should be a casual place for supporters to express themselves and get involved. If your organization appears to be too formal or too restrictive, it will clash with the laissez faire environment of social networking.
- Personify. Give your organization's profile personality — the more like an individual it seems to be, the better. People want to be friends with other people, not impersonal entities.
- Hire moderators (at least at first). Starting a social networking campaign is like hosting a dance. After the first few brave souls venture out onto the dance floor, the rest of the crowd will join. But many discussion boards and social networking areas wither and die before reaching a critical mass of users. Therefore, you may have to pay a token fee to a group of moderators and contributors in the early weeks or months, in order to keep your social networking area lively and inviting.
- Participate frequently. Make sure that there is always something new to see or do for good (i.e., frequent) friends who return multiple times per day. Just like a newspaper or TV news program, fresh content is required to keep viewers' attention.
- If you want to be popular, do what the popular people do. Review and harness what the users with 100,000+ friends are doing right.
- Make connections. While you're at it, get on the good side of those popular people so that they will help you promote your organization and its profile.
- Invite frequently. Use e-mail as a retention and motivation tool. Send frequent e-mail invitations to engaging activities that draw members back to your site.
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