Every time a member makes makes a great contribution to any type of social group, you have an incredible opportunity to increase the quantity and quality of future contributions.
Too often, we thank them. Gratitude is nice. It feels good. They might appreciate the gratitude – but it doesn’t change their behaviour or encourage future contributions.
Worse still, if your thank you feels forced, generic, or is similar to a message you’ve used for a member who has made a far poorer contribution, you will reduce the likelihood of that member making more or better contributions in the future. And today, most of our thank you’s feel forced.
We need to stop thanking members.
Members don’t create great content for your gratitude. They create great content to help the community or achieve a level of status within your community. Every time they create content, they need to know that the content rapidly helped them achieve one of those two goals.
Instead of thanking a member, highlight the impact the contribution has made to the community. Ask for a further related contribution. Tell the member about other issues members are wrestling with and how you think they could really help. Highlight how popular the contribution has been compared with others. Be really specific in explaining how the extra effort they made to create the contribution resulted in the extra impact upon the community.
Alternatively, highlight how it’s increased the status of the member. Tell the member how you’ve noticed they’re fast becoming one of the top people in {your} community.
Now they begin to past-align their actions towards becoming one of the top experts in that sector. They participate more and at greater volume. You’ve used psychology to change their mentality. That’s an incredibly powerful and valuable thing to do.
It’s polite to thank members. It feels good to thank members. The recipient might even like being thanked. But we’re in the business of using psychology to change behaviours. There is a huge opportunity to change behaviour after every single contribution a member makes. I really hope we take advantage of it.