How do you go about reaching your passionate fans? There are lots of ways to galvanize your user base to get them adding SEO-rich content. Check out the screen shots below for some examples. Some sites have been succcessful with on-site callouts with a clear and compelling call to action. Others have used their email lists to reach out to their most passionate fans.
Top Tips for Encouraging User ContributionA wiki is only as good as its community. With only one person contributing to a wiki, the site will not flourish. It is important to encourage others to add and edit content, as that is the whole point of a wiki. Below are a few techniques to draw people out and encourage them to participate.
Create Page Templates
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Mitigate the terror of a blank page! Make it easy for your users to add content by prepopulating your wiki pages with default templates.
Refer to the page template API overview for more information about creating and installing templates in your Wetpaint Injected site areas.
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Flixster Actor quotes template |
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Create Strong Calls to Action
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| 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. |
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| Promote the Injected Experience |
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| 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 wiki 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 on your site (private messages, email, etc.) to introduce the new wiki functionality and encourage your members to participate. We've found that flattery helps: appeal to their expertise!
- Leverage Social Bookmarking Sites: Increase traffic by explaining what social bookmarking is to wiki members and encouraging them to bookmark your site; the more frequently the wiki is bookmarked by a large number of people, the more exposure you'll get.
- Email and Message Board Signatures: Placing a banner or link that advertises the wiki in the signature of your outgoing emails is an easy way to market your site. Becoming involved in online message boards can also draw attention to a personalized, hyperlinked signature. By visiting message boards that are related to the wiki's topic, you will avoid being accused of spamming.
| - 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. 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 an interesting comment, you will pique the interest of others, thus encouraging them to click on your hyperlinked name.
- Link Building: One of the most important parts of getting your site noticed is getting other sites to link to you. Bad sites don't tend to get links, whereas good sites do. When people link to your site, they are telling search engines like Google and Yahoo that your site is a good site. In the same notion, links from good sites around the web will help your site, and bad links could hurt it. An example of a good link is a site that is related to the wiki's topic. Having many links from sites that have nothing to do with the wiki can hurt you in the long run, as search engines will regard those links as "spam."
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Engage and Reward Your Users
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Welcome all new members: It is possible that new users do not know how to use the wiki and they may be a bit apprehensive about making edits. Using the communication channels you have on your site (private messages, email), introduce the new wiki functionality and encourage your members to participate.
Promote active members to moderator status: This isn't advisable for every user on the site, but promoting your most trusted and active members can help to encourage them to participate even more.
| Hold site contests: An interactive site is one of interest to others. Everyone loves to partake in contests, which is exactly why they make great promotional tools for the wiki. A contest can help attract new members to your site as well as get existing members over the (low) hurdle of making that 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: Con |