[Crowd Leader: Rob Vandenberg] How to Effectively Use Incentives in your Crowdsourcing Project

Incentives can be a crucial tool in helping crowd-sourced projects succeed. By creating just the right environment of stimulation, goal-achievement, and reward, you can build a community that will thrive. Here are a few tips to help you design incentives for your crowd-sourced project.

Allow contributors to “level up”
While many of us think of the idea of “leveling up” as exclusively for role playing games or video games, the concept is starting to be used effectively in other mediums. The website SparkPeople.com, a weight management website, is built around community members earning points by taking specific actions on the site. For example, they earn points for reading articles, visiting member blogs, commenting in forums, searching the site, or even for logging in multiple consecutive days in a row. As members earn points they “level up” earning a new ribbon for each level which can be seen on their profile.

The first level is very easy to reach making it easy for newbies to feel quickly motivated, but each level thereafter is increasingly hard, requiring more time and effort, and therefore more satisfaction and community cred once you achieve it.

By offering the ability to “level up” SparkPeople.com drives its users to stay actively engaged in doing the exact activities that the site owners want them to do. Even though earning a level simply means receiving a new badge for your profile, it can represent much more to a community member; it represents their commitment and dedication to their goals and to helping others in the community. By using “level ups” in your crowd sourcing project, you allow contributors to feel this same sense of accomplishment and motivation.

Achievements / Milestones
Another tactic that is similar to “leveling up” but has its own unique advantages is that of awarding achievements or milestones (hereafter referred to as “achievements”). Achievements have been popularized most notably in recent years by the Xbox 360 and the iPad Game Center (notice the trend of using game techniques?).

Achievements reward you for accomplishing a specific task or reaching a certain goal. They differ from a “level up” in that they don’t combine to create an ongoing and linear reward system. For example, a website might offer an achievement for the first time a user creates a profile on their site. As the user advances they may earn an achievement for making a specific number of forum posts or blog comments. In fact you may have multiple milestones for the same type of activity. For example, you may give an achievement for making your first 10 comments and additional achievements for 20, 50, and 100 comments. Achievements can be used in conjunction with “level ups” as well. In such a case each achievement would also earn the user points toward reaching the next level.

One critical distinction between “level ups” and achievements is that achievements seem to be more focused and immediate whereas “level ups” tend to be longer-term and encourage activity over time. This would make achievements more appropriate for driving a specific action and “level ups” appropriate for building general loyalty.

Competitions
Holding competitions can infuse a community with tremendous motivation and excitement by giving contributors an immediate and compelling goal to achieve. It also encourages contributors to engage with other community members by comparing progress and engaging in friendly banter. Competitions can be effectively used to help jump start a new community or to invigorate an existing one. If you have a project that seems to be losing momentum, a contest may be the perfect thing to help re-invigorate team-members.

Elaborate prizes are not necessary when holding competitions. Often, just the recognition is enough to motivate contributors. While offering a tangible prize will likely increase contributors’ motivation level it can also change the dynamics of the competition by making it more cut-throat – a good or bad effect depending on your community. Some communities have a collective personality that may thrive on cut-throat competition. Each community manager should have a sense for the dynamics enough to decide an appropriate prize.

Events (Real or Virtual)
Holding an event can be a great way to strengthen your team and increase dedication and motivation. The bond created when people personally interact can create lasting connections both between individuals as well as with your organization.

Your event doesn’t have to be elaborate. If your budget or geographic constraints allow, holding a face-to-face get-together can allow contributors to match a name to a face and create new friendships. If contributors are spread out geographically or if your budget is low, holding small group chats or get-togethers can still add a new layer of interaction and connection. Because most contributors only interact online through writing or text, adding that extra layer of voice or face-to-face interactions acts to expand ties and deepen relationships.

Focusing Actions
With whatever incentive methods you choose to use, pay special attention to what actions you want your contributors to take. The target actions may be obvious in most cases, but pay attention to what actions will build a robust, thriving community as well. By diversifying the actions you reward contributors for, you can help them become deeply integrated into the community and culture. Here are some examples of actions you might encourage them to take:

• The ultimate goal – Obviously your main focus should be on the ultimate goal. Do you want your contributors to write posts, help customers, create graphics, translate? Your most compelling incentives should focus on this ultimate goal.
• Consecutive logins – By rewarding contributors for logging in for a specific number of consecutive days in a row you encourage them to build the habit of making you top of mind; you become part of their daily routine.
• Forum contributions / comments - By rewarding forum contributions you encourage contributors to help each other. They will be more likely to spend time answering questions and building relationships with other contributors.
• Recruiting – Be sure to provide healthy incentives for contributors who recruit others. New contributors recruited by an existing community member tend to be more “sticky” because they have a built-in support structure and will be like-minded individuals.

Keep Tweaking
Really the only way to find the right mix of incentives is to experiment with different methods and rewards. While some methods work great for one community, they may flop for another. It’s sometimes best to follow your intuition; If you were drawn to one of the methods listed above, start there. This is one case, however, in which you can’t always rely on your community to tell you what they think is best. Using “level ups” or achievements might sound stupid or childish to many in theory, but in practice may turn out to be successfully engaging and compelling.

Let us know what incentive programs have worked best in your crowd-sourcing projects in the forum or comments below.