11 Ways To Get Lurkers To Participate

Many communities would be 100% more successful if they could convert 1% of their lurkers to become creators.

Typically, Lurkers read but don’t participate. Lurkers are likely to reply to direct personal message, but not mass messages. They’re unlikely to get involved in the major events and debates of your community.

With this in mind, here’s 11 ideas to get lurkers to participate.

1. Skilled Projects. Many lurkers don’t feel they have much to add. Create a project that needs certain skill sets. Then ask members with those skills to get involved.
2. Create A Lurker List. Create a list of lurkers. Nothing more, nothing less. Each week add a few more names of lurkers to the list. If they participate, remove their names.
3. Talk About Lurkers. Start discussions about lurkers. Lurkers have the expertise to participate in this debate. Ask people that typically lurk for their opinions. Make sure their voices are heard.
4. Lurker Competition. Anyone with 5 posts or less can participate.
5. Recognise Great Contributions From Non-Regulars. Personally, or publicly, tell someone who isn’t a regular how great their contribution was. Make it non-regulars feel comfortable with getting involved.
6. Provoke A Strong Emotion. Do or say something so great (or terrible) that lurkers have to get involved.
7. Celebrate ‘First Posts’. People celebrate a player’s ‘first-hit’ in baseball. You can celebrate a member’s first post. Make it a tradition when you see a comment by a 1-post member to give a quick welcome and congratulations on their first post.
8. Ask Lurkers What Would Make Them Become Creators. Time intensive, but worthwhile. Ask one lurker per day what would make them become creators. If your community has 36,500 members or less, you’ve just doubled your content in a single year.
9. Lurker Day (or theme). Have a day or weekly theme tailored just for lurkers. Have introduction posts, stupid-questions threads and “Everything you wanted to know about ____ but were afraid to ask” content. Create downloadable primers on how lurkers can become super-members of your community.
10. Lurker Representatives. Recruit people to represent your lurkers. When giving feedback, this representative messages as many lurkers as they can and forms their opinion. Bi-annual elections of course.
11. Kick Out Some Lurkers. Declare that people that read and don’t participate are leeches and kick a few lurkers out. The rest might participate more.

Once you attract the attention of a lurker, point out the next steps they can take and develop a natural arch for them to become creators.

Comments

[Steve Cook]

Delurk - excellent stuff Rich. I found your blog about a month ago and find it really interesting that in these days of social media and blogs that there is someone writing about communities and forums.

It's as if the rest of the world has just forgottn about them, but of course there are plenty of communities out there that have traffic and user participation that would make the average social network jealous.

Well done for finding your niche and writing about it with such passion and clarity.

.steve

[Urban Panther]

Provoke A Strong Emotion. Do or say something so great (or terrible) that lurkers have to get involved.

This one worked! A Lurker came out of the woodwork, blasted me royally, and then left. Lost me a reader over it, but hey they un-lurked! *grin*

[schmutzie]

The Lurker Day idea really works. Last year, I put one together with badges so that everyone could host it, and readers came out for everyone in droves. I ended up meeting some people I otherwise would not have.

[Pace]

Here's a #12 that's inspired by your #2: Split your "Who's Online" sidebar into "Lurkers Online" and "Active Members Online". Instead of their avatar, display a sneaky ninja. Make the "Lurkers Online" sidebar very prominent.

[Martin Reed]

Fantastic post and some fantastic ideas. I particularly love the idea of having a lurker rep and a lurker list. I think I may just incorporate these concepts into my new community.

- Martin

[Kristin T.]

Thanks for the great ideas. They're the best sort: both funny and practical.

My favorite is #3. Playing to someone's expertise is always a good idea; when applied to lurkers, you get the added benefit of embedded irony.

[Roy Scribner]

Hey! I'm a lurker on your blog and you got me to post :)

Driving participation is a challenge that requires constant testing and tweaking of content for success. The first step, of course, is to actively consider growing participation when writing your content.

[Ken Allan]

Tenei to mihi ki a koe Richard!

Delurking is such a cool practice. It takes a lot of thinking. It also often helps if you also know who your lurkers are, for you can actually target them.

Targeting lurkers privately is also another technique that works well - by this I mean that the targeting is not made public. This is one of the ways of encouraging lurkers to become active participants. We all benefit from that!

Ka kite
from Middle-earth

[le]

hee hee - this one sure made me laugh ... and think.

To be honest I am rather relaxed about the lurkers ... hate the name .... in life some people are listerns and some people are talkers, some sit quietly, some jump up and say gday .... this is how it is. Cheers le