User Generated Content and MMFI

Make me feel important! This was one of the many mantras of marketing I heard in my undergraduate entrepreneurship program. If you want participation on your site, making your top users feel important is critical. 20 percent of your users will create 80 percent of your content. These users need to be rewarded for this effort, and they want to feel like they matter. Sites that fail to recognize and reward their users will be light with comments and activity.

I am working on several social media projects where I am having to convince people that users need to take more of a forefront in the site's architecture and focus. This is unfortunate since the success of these site's are highly dependent on user generated content. I've received a lot of puzzled looks, and have engaged in a lot of backward arguments on this subject. Some people either don't get it or don't care. Some people I have talked to figure that users should just want to participate because the site is so great. Great sites help, but you can't stop there. It's tough to differentiate and create a long term competitive advantage on the net, and user activity is a great way to do it. You can't copy and paste a robust user base. Your user base can't all of a sudden go open source.

I like to see top users right on the front page of the site. People love it. It's fun being represented like that and makes people feel important. You can also give them special status. Make them moderators, give them some stars by there name. Anything.
Just remember one thing if you want users on your site: Make Me Feel Important.