Who's That Lurking On My Site?

We’ve been talking a lot about what it means to be an effective networked nonprofit over at the Case Foundation. It’s a hot conversation that seems to be happening in a lot of places right now, not to mention it’s the topic of Beth Kanter and Allison Fine’s new book The Networked Nonprofit which hits shelves everywhere today.  While network builders sit on one side of the spectrum and help their organizations recognize the power of adopting new social habits, there’s another group of folks who can be found out there (“found” being a relative term). These are the social media “lurkers” – and it’s not just individuals who are lurking, organizations can fall into that category as well  if they aren’t comfortable diving in and contributing to online conversations.

So, what makes a social media lurker, you ask? Here are a few questions to determine whether you, or your organization falls into that category:

• Did you set up a Twitter  account months ago and then never return?
• Are you on Facebook but never update your status -- or comment on your friends’ posts?
• Are you on LinkedIn but you don’t engage with your network, you just accept invites?
• Are you reading this blog right now, but know you’ll never post a comment? (I hope not!)

Perhaps what makes the conversation even more interesting from a Social Citizens perspective is that there is this false assumption that the Millennial generation is comprised of great content contributors.  While in fact, they are spending more and more time online, they are doing it more so to  find information rather than contribute their own. Millennials, and even younger generations, are using sites like Facebook, MySpace, Google, and YouTube to find content, but, as a recent article on the website Millennial Marketing says, “few make use of Twitter or maintain a blog….only half of 18-24-year-olds are what [a survey classifies] as ‘creators’. Few students make use of RSS feeds, wikispaces or other productivity enhancing tools.”

We can reasonably assume that these so-called lurkers (of any age or demographic) make up the largest percentage of the online population especially if you believe the 90-9-1 principle, which is that 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute some activity in the community (active lurkers), and 1% of users account for almost all the action. 

Even if that’s the case, I’d argue that some communities like Twitter, Yelp, even TripAdvisor see a much higher percentage of their online audience participating and adding to the dialogue. In fact, it’s estimated that members of those online communities engage closer to the 30-40% mark and even if they aren’t contributing directly to the online forum, there is value in having them take what they learn and share them more broadly with the offline world.   So, what techniques have worked for these online communities that might apply to nonprofits?

All of this has made me keen to explore how to help people and organizations make the transition from community consumers to active contributors. The examples below are taken from Jake Mckee on the 90-9-1 site he developed, and are as good as any I've seen.

• Make contributing easy for everyone. Design contribution tools that scale in complexity, giving power tools to power users, while easing usage for light users.
• Encourage editing over creating. Blank pages are scary. Create templates, rough examples that can be easily edited, content suggestions, and tons of examples that help eliminate the fear factor.
• Reward participants.People will give up their first born for a gold star next to their name. Go easy on the rewards, but certainly bake them into the process of participation.
• Identify both power users and up and coming users.Call out your power users with featured spots on your home page or corporate blog. And don’t forget that if you always call out the top 10 users, the other 90,000 won’t feel like they have a chance. Shine the spotlight on the up and comers too!

Can these lurkers and content creators co-exist in social media harmony? Better yet, what can organizations do to move lurkers  into engaged members of the community?