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Top Tips for Encouraging User Contribution
How do you go about reaching your passionate fans and turning them into content-generating wunderkinds? There are plenty of ways to galvanize your members to get them adding SEO-rich content. Top Tips for Encouraging User ContributionA wiki is only as good as its community. Below are a few techniques to encourage community contribution.

Create Page Templates

Mitigate the terror of a blank page! Make it easy for your users to add content by populating your wiki pages with preformatted templates.

Refer to the page template API overview for more information about creating and installing templates in your Wetpaint Injected site areas.

Install page templates

Flixster Actor quotes template



Create Strong Calls to Action

This may sound obvious, but be obvious. What do you want users to do and understand on each page? Hail them with a directive call to action! Doing so will give confidence to those who may feel uneasy about making page edits.

See Explaining Wetpaint Injected for more ideas and recommended verbiage.

Create calls to action



Promote the Injected Experience
Help your wiki become a success by actively networking with people, both within your existing site and among other related communities. A steady amount of promotion, coupled with quality content, can greatly increase your site's popularity. Below are just a few recommended methods of promotion.
  • Start at home: Use the communication channels you have at your disposal (private messages, email, etc.) to introduce the new Injected functionality and encourage your members to participate. We've found that flattery helps: appeal to their expertise (and egos)!
  • Leverage Social Bookmarking Sites: Increase traffic by explaining what social bookmarking is to your site members and encouraging them to bookmark your site; the more frequently your site is bookmarked, the more exposure you'll get.

  • Link Building: One of the most important ways to get your site noticed is by securing links to it from other sites. When people establish a link to your site, they are telling search engines like Google and Yahoo! that your site is a "good" site. Links from other good and content-related sites around the web will help boost your site in search engine rankings.
  • Email and Message Board Signatures: Placing a banner or link that advertises your site in the signature of your outgoing emails is an easy way to market your site. Becoming involved in related message boards can also draw attention to a personalized, hyperlinked signature.

  • Blogs: Like email and message board signatures, you can leave behind a personalized link to your site on various blogs. It is also good to make friends with bloggers who write about a subject related to the wiki. Those people may be willing to exchange links with you. Most blogs will allow you to hyperlink your name to any site when you leave a comment on a blog entry. By finding popular blogs that are related to your site and leaving a compelling comment, you will pique the interest of other potential members of your site.

  • Optimize your site for search engines: Read more about optimizing your Wetpaint Injected site for search engine discovery.



Engage and Reward Your Users

Welcome all new members: New visitors to your site may not know how to use the editing features and they may be a bit apprehensive about making contributions. Make sure to introduce the Injected functionality and its relevance to all new members as they join.

Promote active members to moderator status: This isn't advisable for every user on the site, but promoting your most trusted and active members to moderator status can encourage them to participate even more — not to mention help with overall site maintenance and member education.
Hold site contests: A promotion can help attract new members to your site as well as get existing members over the (low) hurdle of making that all-important first edit. You'll stand a much greater chance that content creation will become a habit for your site members if you get them to try it!

Acknowledge your contributors: Give props to your member contributors and they'll keep on contributing. Read more on this topic.



Back to: Wetpaint Injected Best Practices Guide