Ask HN: How can you encourage users to generate content? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How can you encourage users to generate content?

#21

Post by TobiasCassell » Tue, Nov 03, 2009, 6:10 PM UTC

vital101 wrote: post #13

patio11 wrote: post #2

You need to answer this question: what need does contributing a review solve for the reviewer? What do they get out of it? StackOverflow bet big, and won, that technically inclined people would contribute millions of dollars of free consulting if it awarded them with, essentially, the geek equivalent of WoW loot. (Pixels of no importance or cost outside the game but, critically, important to the players.) HackerNews…

Can you recommend any good reads on how web site design can influence interaction with your web site (if such a thing exists)? Or any good reads on web design in general. I already know the technical points (HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, etc), but I'm looking for more information on design best practices.

"Dont Make Me Think" by Steve Krug is a legendary book and You need this book too-

Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click? (Paperback) ~ Susan M. Weinschenk (Author)

http://www.amazon.com/Neuro-Web-Design-Makes-Click/dp/032160...

Re: Ask HN: How can you encourage users to generate content?

#22

Post by mbenjaminsmith » Tue, Nov 03, 2009, 6:10 PM UTC

This is focused on Michigan? I would make that obvious and give people a quick way to move to their school. I was a bit lost when I went to the site and wanted a menu with school names.

Ditto to answering "what's in it for me" for the users in terms of contribution. Warm fuzzies? Recognition? Cash? I would try paid first though, given the time vs cash balance of most college kids.

In terms of delivering a value prop right off the bat, check out britekite's header graphic/animation - I've seen few sales pitches that get the job done as well.

You should add in Calvin, btw, we had the distinction of sending more grad students to UM than UM undergrad did.

Re: Ask HN: How can you encourage users to generate content?

#23

Post by apalmblad » Tue, Nov 03, 2009, 6:31 PM UTC

Whenever I need to think about ways to motivate users, I head over Yahoo and their social patterns area. They've got a decent set of user recognition patterns and, more importantly, descriptions and reasons why to apply them to your site. Check out: http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/social/people/reputatio...

Re: Ask HN: How can you encourage users to generate content?

#24

Post by weaksauce » Tue, Nov 03, 2009, 7:21 PM UTC

You might want to listen to this venture voice episode that I just heard:

http://www.venturevoice.com/2007/06/vv_show_46_jeremy_stoppe...

It's about the beginning of yelp by it's founder and one of the areas he touched on is how they started off in new geographic areas. It might be a good fit for your situation.

Re: Ask HN: How can you encourage users to generate content?

#25

Post by vital101 » Tue, Nov 03, 2009, 8:35 PM UTC

alttab wrote: post #20

I saw that you said somewhere in here that you are concentrating on 7-8 schools in Michigan. That's a lot of classes, a lot of books. Maybe you should try ONE school, namely, yours. You could even prune it down further to certain majors or departments. If someone says "do you have it for English as well as Math/Computer Science?" then you know its gaining steam. The idea of class reviews, teacher reviews, along with…

I have to agree with the focus on one school. I thought originally that having a few key Michigan schools would be easy enough to manager, but as it turns out, it's really hard. Believe it or when I started this thing, I thought the hardest part would be getting data about schools. In hindsight, that's easy, I should have been more worried about how crappy this site looks from the get-go.