Rewards and Achievements

Participation is its own reward, but public recognition is better. Build a system of rewards and achievements that makes sense and provides real benefits to your community members.

As promised, I am back from the visionary ether of what rewards and achievements could (and should) be. Today, I am looking at very practical ways to expand (or start) your rewards program that you can implement right away.

It’s pretty awesome to be part of a community of like-minded individuals who share your enthusiasm for a given project or technology. A lot of people get a kick out of that. Over time, top contributors emerge, and some sort of a meritocratic order forms. However, if you are hoping for vigorous growth and high levels of engagement early on, figuring out a meaningful way to reward desired behaviours would be a good use of your time.

If your mind immediately jumped to images of convoluted brand loyalty programs with miles or points which can be exchanged for a wide selection of goods or services, you may feel intimidated. Who has the budget and the time to manage all that? But fear not! There are ways to run an effective rewards and achievements program on the cheap, using the tools that you already have, and some creative thinking.

Step One: Find all the data

To reward people for things they have done, you need to know what they’ve done, how much of it, and when. This becomes easier ir you’ve already got a forum, because forum platforms usually  have reputation points management built in. Most often participants get rewarded a point or two for posting a message (whether an original thread or a response), and if their answer is selected as the “helpful” or the “correct” one by the original poster, there is a bonus of maybe five or ten points. There may be additional points earned for other in-forum behaviours, such as joining a group or following other users. Whatever it is, if you have an online forum, you have some sort of data to start from.

You may not realize that there are other sources of data that may be available to you. They may not be automated and easy to consume, but they are there. Here are a few examples:

• User group attendees, speakers, and user group leads
• Conference, webinar, and seminar attendees
• Lists of bloggers who cover your products
• List of people who reshare your content on Twitter and other social networks

Step Two: Reward the right people

By studying as many sources of data as you can, you will be able to identify the people who contribute more than average. The goal of a rewards system is to encourage these folks to do more: More blogging, more presentations, more learning, and more sharing.

By rewarding them publicly, you will also send the message to the other 90 percent of the community that you (and the company you work for) value all sorts of contributions, not just forum Q&A. You will be surprised what people come up with once they know that they can color outside the lines. I have seen volunteers creating video tutorials, writing whole books, creating free training coursework, and even fly to another country to help jumpstart a user group.

Your focus will be not on defining what you want the community to do, but rather keeping your eyes out for the reward-worthy actions and making a big deal out of every one. Find a cool new blog? Blog about it. Maybe even start a monthly “community blog roundup” where you link to that month’s community blog posts. Got a bunch of active user group leads? Interview them on your podcast if you have it, or mention them in a community newsletter at the very least.

Step Three: Find rewards worthy of your community

Now I am assuming that my readers are bootstrapping most of their community projects on the minimum budget. If you have more, bully for you, but we’ll be here, improvising if you don’t mind.

Here are a few low-budget ideas that you can implement today, on your own or with minimal support from other groups in your company:

• VIP program invitations: If you have a VIP program already, invite them in. If you don’t–what are you waiting for? These are your VIPs. Treat them as such. Make some noise about admitting/nominating/anointing new people into the program, so that they feel special, and everyone else knows that they are. A good VIP program will have a recurring admission schedule, a special time when the new VIPs get announced. Make it like Xmas or some other holiday: the wait and suspense is half the fun, but there’s a great reveal at the end.
• I have already mentioned callouts and public kudos. Costs you nothing, and gives everyone involved warm and fuzzies. And don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s a cheap trick: heartfelt sincere gratitude never gets old. Remember, it’s your job to keep the community running; these folks don’t have to help you, yet they do. So thank them, and mean it.
• Share responsibility. Invite top contributors to guest-post on your blog, make them moderators and user group leads, allow them to help you with things you wished you had bandwidth for, but never get around to doing: official schwag, curation of guest articles, even selection of the next generation of VIPs.
• If you have a few hundred bucks lying around, you could try issuing physical trophies, or special schwag, such as backpacks or apparel. These work best if the people you want to honor are already in the same place, such as your annual user conference in Vegas. Rent a ballroom, buy some beer, and have an award ceremony for the creme de la creme. The effect diminishes if you have to mail the goodies, but you can have fun with asking the recipients to share photos of themselves with their trophies — on the forums or social media.
• Speaking of annual user conferences: If you can beg, borrow, or steal some event passes for the VIPs to attend for free, you’ll be able to demonstrate that you put your money where your mouth is when you say “thank you.” You will have to convince the group running the conference to give you some passes, so prepare with good arguments of why they should miss out on revenue for your community people.
• If you can’t get the free passes, maybe you can convince the organizers to allow you to reserve front-row seats in the general session for the VIPs. We’re back to zero-cost option here, and this may be a good fallback position. They still have to pay to attend, but get special treatment while there.
• Now that you’re getting used to cajoling other groups in your company into giving you freebees, how about reaching out to the product group and asking for early access to information for your VIPs? Launching a product? You’ve got bloggers. Get them into an embargoed pre-launch briefing, set them up with the media kit, and they will write about your launch. At least some will. The rest will feel privileged to have been allowed into the inner circle.
• Another cheap or no-cost thing to do is provide your superstars with exclusive access to internal people. It can be a dinner with the CEO at the aforementioned conference, or maybe a WebEx meeting with the product manager where they can share feedback.

As you see, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to show appreciation and recognize the people who make your community vibrant. What you will spend a lot of will be time: finding the right people, and finding the right rewards. But that is what true love is about: time you spend on them. Because they already spend a lot of time on you.