On this topic of revised pyramids, check out this inverted model on the conversation pyramid:

We will discuss this further in another post (I have to go clean the house for Shabbat now).

In his book Freakonomics, author Stephen Levitt did a study about honesty and transparency.   Looking at dating sites, Levitt found that most people on these sites embellished when it came to describing themselves in terms of economic status, physical attributes, and other qualities.  Levitt found that members who included a picture on their dating site profiles experienced more success in getting email responses than members who did not include pictures but had more “appealing” profile descriptions.

“Of the many ways to fail on a dating site, not posting a picture of yourself is perhaps the most certain,” Levitt said.  Something about the photo, even if it is not a photo of yourself, enhances the profile and makes people respond.  “A man who does not include his photo gets only one fourth the volume of email response of a man who does; a woman who doesn’t include a photo gets only one sixth the response.”  This means that a man who describes himself as low-income, balding, and overweight but who includes a picture of himself will get 24 email responses versus 6-email responses for a man who lists himself as high-income, full head of hair, and fit, but does not include a picture.  For a woman who lists herself as overweight, low-educated, and brown hair (a statistically less appealing color in online dating sites than blond) but who includes a picture of herself will get 24 email responses versus 4-email responses for a woman who lists herself as thin, highly educated, and blond.

What works for dating sites can be applied to any community.  Pictures change the online experience by putting a face behind the profile.  Also, they are one of the easiest ways to engage in a community online.  It only takes a few minutes to select a picture you like and upload it to your online profile.  The hardest part is probably picture selection, but once you find a picture you like it is suggested to use that same picture across all of your online profiles.  Besides being easier than selecting a new picture for every profile, this also helps create personal branding, which allows people to more easily recognize you across communities.  If you have pictureless profiles and find that you are having a hard time engaging in online communities try uploading a photo and then expanding your network.  The exchange has a statistically better chance of generating a response and you will feel more engaged in the community yourself.

Start with three questions: (1) what do you love doing? (2) what are the reasons you love it? and (3) how can you use what you love to solve a need others have?  Let’s look at the first one.

(1) What do you love doing? Don’t think too hard on this one.  Love does not have to be some unattainable standard that only romantics can reach.  I’ve seen guys who love washing dishes, gardening, and accounting.  Some people love sticking their fingers in peoples mouths (in the industry we call them “dentists”).  The key here is to find something you have an aptitude for (naturally gravitate towards and have basic proficiency in) and then look for the aspects of that thing that really engage you.  Focus on these attractive aspects as you develop a plan to “cash in on your passion” as Gary Vaynerchuk says.  Just like in real life, not everything about your chosen area will be a knock out, but you need to find the parts you do love and run with those.

(2) What are the reasons you love it? List them out on a piece of paper.  Don’t edit, just list, list, list.  Chances are you can come up with twenty or so reasons before you start to repeat yourself.  These are your first 20 posts.  The amazing thing is that as you write and deliver on your blog, new posts on topic will generate themselves.  Again, the hook is that you love it.  As you engage it starts to build itself and take on a momentum fueled by your passion.  If you feel like stopping, just make sure it isn’t what Stephen Pressfield calls “The Resistence,” what Seth Godin calls “The Lizard Brain,” what I call “The Challenge” stopping you from delivering.  A good way to test it is to force yourself to show up through The Challenge.  If you go for a long period of time, feeling no joy in what you are doing anymore, chances are it is time to find a new gig.  And the beauty of the Internet is you can go ahead and start it and always come back to the old one.

(3) How Can You Use What You Love to Solve a Need Others Have? As you generously give your gifts of love and passion to the world, sharing in your niche corner of the web, try to think of how what you are sharing can be of a benefit to someone else.  While this principle is taught in Marketing 101, so few traditional marketers naturally think this way.  They look at product first and think about fulfilling needs as a result.  Turn that equation around and your are giving something of true value.  You are no longer telling the market what they need but answering them.  It is the way businesses and blogs should be run.  Doing otherwise is self indulgent.  So look for ways that your passions help others, whether that is sharing fly fishing tips (the need for recreation), talking about chair exercises (the need for health), or expressing your love for the Sunday comics (the need to laugh) keeping your potential niche readers in mind and how you can help them will make your blog a more engaging piece of content.

After you have answered these questions to your satisfaction, get going!  There are over 3 billion people on the Internet waiting to read your stuff.  If you got 0.01 of them to read your blog you’d be a millionaire.

Tell me if you’ve experienced this scenario.  You have an online community that is growing in membership.  A few superusers have surfaced and these people are posting some great content.  Regardless, the goose eggs are stacking up in the comments column and you have no idea why.

Even the most commented communities experience the goose egg phenomenon.  Managing an online community combines art, science, and social skills.  There are no hard fast rules.  Trial and error is a watchword.  Even with such esoteric odds, research shows that 25% member engagement per month is a healthy metric for a community.

This means that about 25% of your active user base makes themselves visible in some way – not just logging in, but actually doing something that is traceable and visible to the community operations. This could be posting a message or leaving a comment, or even responding to a newsletter.

“Looking for a sign of life.  Looking for something to help me burn out bright.” – Foo Fighters, Learn to Fly

We use the term “lurkers” on this blog.  It has a negative connotation that we want to change.  Still, people understand what a “lurker” is.  Plus it’s more edgy than the politically correct and more accurate term “Active Reader.”  When looking for a sign of life in your community know that logins, votes in polls, and “liking” posts are all signs of life.  The question for community managers is how do you turn those blips into a pulse?

Social Engineering – Take a trip to Disney’s Magic Kingdom if you want to see social engineering in action.  Everything about the park is designed to take you through the Disney experience the way they want you to go through it.  As you enter the park, something stimulates you to get your heart racing.  It leads you to an activity.  Then a bench to sit on and collect yourself.  The smell of food hits you reminding you to eat.  At the food stand an add for a grand attraction tells you to trek to another area of the park.  As you embark on the next leg of your journey a garbage can is conveniently located a certain amount of steps away from the food stand where you took your food to go.

Disney’s  design is no accident.  They know where they are bringing you.  An online community needs a similar path.  You should have a clear map of simple and important goals for users.  Then move members through the life cycle.  As they progress, reward them handsomely (or at least creatively; some of the best incentives are not tangible).

Tactics – When it comes to tactics there are no shortage of suggestions.  Check out Vanessa DiMauro’s recent post about the 4-Stage Model for Member Engagement.  She talks about Engagement Resources such as “launch guides, welcome kits, official greeters, suggested content … member-to-member support and leadership, intermediate member recognition incentives and rewards,” and many others.  What I want to talk about here are risk levels for member participation.

Like the Disney map, you want to move members through different risk levels of participating in your community.  Start by encouraging low risk activities like voting in a poll, rating or liking a post, and adding profile pictures.  After a member develops more of a relationship to the site try to move them to mid-risk activities like commenting on an uploaded file or blog post.  As the member gets more comfortable in the community reach out to encourage a more high risk activity like a guest blog post or leading a forum discussion.

Tactically speaking you want to do three things in leading them through the theme park that is your community:

1. Provoke and stimulate curiosity
2. Ask questions
3. Articulate growth steps

What are some of the tactics and approaches you have used that work?  How have you socially engineered your community?

I am a procrastinator.  When I creatively procrastinate it is even more amusing, taking on too many projects, making too lofty a goal, and setting myself up for failure.  This is the Resistance.  It sets play dates with my ego, sets me up for non-failure (you only experience failure if you do something), and frustrates any goals I have.  The key to beating the Resistance is using it to beat it at it’s own game.

You will feel the most resistance about the things you most want to do.  We spoke the other day about the difference between should and must.  The Resistance uses shoulds to kill your musts.  Ever thought about embarking on a career as a photographer, trying to get paid taking pictures, but then tell yourself you’d be crazy to give up your corporate job?  Resistance.  Ever thought of selling t-shirts on the beach in Cancun and living a simple life, but then told yourself you’d be crazy to leave that teaching job?  Resistance.  You get the idea.

Am I telling you to be irresponsible and drop everything to follow your dreams?  I don’t know.  You have to decide what works for you.  But I am saying that if you truly want to accomplish something online, whether it is keeping a regular blog or becoming a recognized leader in an online community, the only way to get started is to get started.

I have a friend who is a really bright guy.  He has fantastic ideas about how lawyers can make a practical transition into social media that will benefit their practice.  He told me these ideas and tactics over Starbucks one day, sitting on some stone benches outside Rockafeller Plaza, where he was set to present to the senior partners of his very large law firm about this very topic.  The passion he displayed in talking about this made his regular M&A work (mergers and acquisitions) look like an afterthought.  He told me that he had wanted to blog on this subject for some time.  I asked him why he didn’t just do it.  He told me that he was getting his thoughts together and would launch the blog in time.

This I didn’t understand.  The very form of the blog is a work in progress.  The beauty of the blog is that it is a “web … log” allowing you to log your ideas in a public forum and have them develop in a way they never could in isolation.  Here was a guy talking about changing the legal industry but not willing to take the first steps himself until he was ready.  What was holding him back?  Resistance.

Don’t believe the voice that is lying to you.  Comment on what see.  Get involved.  Risk ridicule.  It will be worth it for you to make a difference rather than being an anonymous sideline player.  Who knows?  Perhaps the public forum will take your work to exactly where it needs to go.

In essence Seth talks about the kind of people who follow through.  They step up and take a chance, they finish what they start, and inspire others to join them.

You are a linchpin.  If you find the passion in your work and create and put yourself on the cutting edge, you are indispensible. Most people  like to be told what to do.  They are scared of doing something great b/c then you’ve got to ship.  Shipping means delivering on what you promise.  What if people don’t like it?  What if it was all a waste of time?  These are the thoughts of a cog, someone who wants to be invisible.  Being a linchpin is all about being engaged.  It’s about doing something important, standing up and contributing your unique part of the puzzle, and being proud of it regardless of what others think.  Being a linchpin makes you a target, for praise and criticism, but most of all it makes you an artist, someone who shares their gifts with the world regardless of the cost and makes a difference.

What matters in creation is shipping, not starting.  People ship because they either run out of money or run out time, then they ship.  A linchpin embraces this truth at the front end.  Everything they do is directed towards shipping, and when they do, they can be proud of what they did.  Surprising yourself makes you a linchpin.  Be indispensable.

The choices presented to us daily can be staggering.  We are trained from early on to do the things we should do.  You should eat vegetables.  You should be polite.  You should do your homework.  Grant it each of these things are good guideposts to being healthy, getting along socially, and advancing in school.  Too often we become crippled by what we “should do” and deathly afraid of making the wrong decisions.  Should I join that club?  Should I take that job?  Should I post that blog?

There are no hard fast answers here to how you should live your life.  Most of the time it comes down to trial and error.  I’m speaking from a professional, practical, spiritual, and all things in between perspective here.  Take something as seemingly clear as religion as most people understand it.  There are rules and if they are not followed you are punished, sometimes eternally.  As ridiculous as this simplification feels to write, unfortunately it is viewpoint that many people hold, even if they are not aware of it.  In my experience, the rules of religion are good guidelines to experience our lives, allowing for trial and error, experimentation, exploration, and discovery.

As human beings we have freewill – the power of choice.  I’m not getting into the details of whether the choice is truly free.  Assuming you can choose how to feel today, your viewpoint, what you do (this or that) in the universe presented to you at any given moment, are your ruled by what you think you should do or by what you know in your heart you must do?  This is the difference between creating and following.  Yes – we all have responsibilities – but making choices of how to carry them out based on a compelling need to make an impact and the best choice possible regardless of whether it goes against convention – now this is life.

The first thing I told myself: “today’s going to be a great day.”  Having learned this technique from the popular book The Secret, I made positivity my mantra.  I then visualized successful meetings, getting things done on my list, and starting a new project.  It made me excited to look at my work this way, and by the time  I had my shoes on and was out the door I didn’t even remember why I had wanted to stay in bed.

Seth Godin calls this “the lizard brain” and says that accomplishing anything requires quieting the lizard brain so your inner daemon can create works of genius.  The lizard lives in this part of the brain called “the amygdala,” one of the most primal parts of the brain, which governs the fight or flight response.  It is the amygdala that tells you to stay in bed.

According to Dr. Ellen Weber at Brain Leaders and Learners (and Godin in his book Linchpin), the amygdala can be tamed.  “Simply put, you can learn to bypass your amygdala’s automatic default operations, in much the same way you choose to tap different buttons on a computer, to enter a different screen.”  By practicing different reactions, engaging in different tactics when your mind starts racing, you can change your automated reactions.

In my case, the amygdala started to talk me into staying in bed (it loves staying in safe, warm, bed).  Instead of listening or resisting, I redirected.  I started to think of all the reasons to be excited for getting out of bed (I knew this was the outcome I wanted).  This lead to excitement building up, chemicals releasing in my brain telling the amygdala “we’ve got this one covered big guy,” and motivating me to get up.

When you are faced with doing something or not doing something, take the advice from Nike and “just do it.”  Picture a successful journey and a successful outcome.  Many people hesitate getting involved in events both online and offline because they don’t think they have anything to contribute.  They fear being laughed at or having their idea criticized.

So what?  Put out the stupid idea.  Get laughed at.  Attention is at a premium these days, especially on the web.  Chances are that insight you share or comment you post won’t be jumped on.  And if it is – great!  Leverage that for a conversation.

Among professionals like lawyers or doctors, this type of jump in the conversation style can be intimidating.  There are ethics violations associated with saying the wrong thing, right?  I presently know of only a handful cases where a lawyer has been sanctioned or disciplined by the bar for things said online.  Not to say there won’t be more or that professionals are immune, but the stupidity bar is set pretty high.  You have to do things that most competent lawyers or doctors wouldn’t do online anyway.

The take away here is don’t wait for the sky to open up and inspiration to carry you into the heavens before deciding to get involved.  Making the leap opens you up to possibilities.  You may even surprise yourself about what is possible.  Today has been a great day so far, and I never would have known it if I didn’t get out of bed this morning.

In my post The 31 Flavors of Fear: Why Do People Lurk, we looked at the mechanisms and theories behind fear.  To put it simple: we fear being great.  Being great involves risk.  It takes putting yourself out there, which can lead to criticism.  Most of us don’t like criticism, not because it’s a bad thing, but because it has been so misused.  When constructive, criticism can be one of the greatest tools to growth.  When not, well, this is what most of us fear.

When creating engagement, either in others or yourself, getting past the fear of not producing masterpieces everytime is key.  Every artist and genius produces crap.  The reason we call it a “masterpiece” is because of all the things a person has produced, this single piece of work stands out as their best and redefines the class of similar pieces by their peers.  Not something so common.  The trick is you can’t get to the masterpiece without producing lots of other pieces (many of them pieces of crap).

To put this in perspective, genius, artist, director Tim Burton has produced some of the most brilliant films of our time.  A recent exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) highlights his body of work.  It is amazing to see just how much this man has produced in his lifetime, most of which never saw a movie set (Seth Godin posted Unrealized Projects a part of the MOMA exhibit showing about 30 years of annual projects that Burton has worked on which never materialized) .  This video illustrates his commitment to his vision and inspires me to produce no matter what:

What we learn from Godin and Burton is that production matters.  Just put it out there.  Don’t censor.  The more you produce the more likely you are to create something engaging, whether it is forum posts or novels.  Keep busy.

Think of going on a date.  You are out to dinner with someone you have just met.  Conversation involves a mix of questions, statements, and listening.  Ever been on a date with a conversation dominator?  It is something akin to medieval torture and instructional video at work.  Boring.  The best people to date are the ones who ask about you, share things about themselves in response, and keep a natural flow to the conversation going throughout the dinner or other activity designed to forward the relationship.

Why should your online activities be any different?  This is why the best leaders and most engaging people on the web listen as much as they share.  They respond to the needs of those engaged with them.

Sanford Misner developed a method for improv actors to learn how to be real in the moment.  It was creatively called “The Misner Method,” and involved repetition.  One actor faced the other and made a statement.  The second actor then repeated that statement before responding.  The premise is that we don’t really listen to what others say before responding.  We are too busy thinking about what we want to say.

In the social media world, the Meisner Method can be akin to lurking.  We digest what is going on in the community before responding.  This avoids domination of the conversation and allows others to shine.  But just as any successful date or improv comedy show must involve an exchange, if we only lurk, we lose.

Meaningful contributions, whether in comments, votes on a poll, or connecting to others in a community allow for relationships to be built.  They push us a little bit more to humanity on the web.

What is stopping you from participating more?  Is it lack of interest?  You wouldn’t be consuming if it wasn’t interesting to you.  Is it lack of time?  If so, than would offering low risk, low time commitments to show your participation help?