We would all like to think that we’re good people. And, if pressed on the topic, we can usually find examples of how good we are.

“I held the door open for an old man.”

“I gave a homeless guy a buck.”

“I let someone merge ahead of me during rush hour.”

But let’s be honest: would you still do these things as often if nobody saw you do them? What if you held that door open and the man walked through without noticing you? What if nobody saw you give the homeless guy a buck…not even the homeless guy? Don’t you get irritated when you let someone merge and they don’t even give you a friendly wave?

Don’t worry, you’re not a bad person…just a human.

One of the most valuable concepts for community managers may be Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It nicely maps out the importance of various needs of humans*.

Most people have fairly fragile self-esteem, and – whether they explicitly say it or not – the respect of others is important to them. We’re more likely to be involved in a cancer run than to anonymously donate $50 to cancer research. Foursquare is a pretty silly concept if you think about it. But damn if you don’t want that badge. We want that recognition.

Again, that doesn’t make us bad people. We could get that recognition by dominating at a sport, making the most sales at a company, or being the biggest bully in school. There’s honor in choosing to stroke your ego through positive actions.

If you’re a community manager focused on getting people to contribute,  stop trying to appeal to their morality. I don’t care if you’re as frivolous as Facebook or as honorable as Kiva. You’re going to get the most engagement by appealing to people’s need for recognition.

Why do people retweet blog posts? Post to forums? Attend events? Not just to share the knowledge with others; they also want to show how smart they are for finding this content first.

If you want people to contribute, create a way for them to share how great they are. Seeking donations? Give people a gift that lists your cause on it so they can show everyone that they supported you. Seeking forum activity? Highlight people who contribute; make them feel special. Want people to share blog posts? Include juicy stats that make them look like a brilliant researcher.

*I don’t think Maslow’s Hierarchy is perfect (so few things are), but I think the general concept is very useful.

Last year I came back from the Community Leadership Summit in Portland with the high-level message that we needed to be spreading our gospel throughout the company. This year, the overall vibe I got out of the event was much more practical:

We need to push back. We need to get serious. We need to take control.

From sessions on how community is marketing to how community managers should be CEOs, the vibe was clear: our craft is now legit, and we have the opportunity to not accept the status quo (“Sweet, we can all get jobs now!” as Jono said) but actually make a difference.

Maybe it’s because I read The Cluetrain Manifesto on the way in and out, but we are the employees in our organizations who deal with what the real world actually cares about: conversations. Real, honest, conversations. And we have the power to grow businesses if we not only encourage and join with these conversations, but also tell the other departments to get in line.

Let’s take these companies by the horn. There is a huge market for community managers, so we’re in a far less precarious position than we have been in previous years. We can get hired somewhere else, so as Danese Cooper of Wikimedia said: if your company doesn’t allow you to communicate freely, quit. It won’t actually hurt your profession. Might actually help (it did for her).

This is not to say that we should set fire to the other departments in our building. Rachel Luxemburg from Adobe came from a marketing background, and her comments were a fantastic foil all weekend: yes, marketing and sales and legal go too far. That’s their job. Our job is to push back. If we’re scared to push back, nothing will get done. If they don’t try to defend their principles, we’ll get our butts sued off. Find a balance. Don’t live in fear, and don’t trash their desks. You have to coexist.

We can make a difference. We have momentum now – let’s use it intelligently. Let’s move this from a silo’d effort to what business is about. I believe we can do it.

Footnote: thank you to everyone who came and contributed to CLS11. You can find notes from this year’s CSL at Wikia. There were some fantastic conversations and many more fantastic people, and I can’t wait to continue conversations with you on Twitter. Didn’t attend, but interested? There’s a CLS West in the Bay Area in January and you can keep up-to-date on CLS itself at communityleadershipsummit.com.

CLS photo courtesy of the wonderful Mark Terranova.
Crop photo courtesy of Tgrab.

I got into an interesting debate with a coworker about using an iPad (or physical goods/money in general) as a contest prize. I posited that it’s a bad idea as it brings in people from outside your community who don’t care about your product. He pointed out that it doesn’t matter if they’re outsiders – you can generate a lot of buzz with money/prizes. Neither of us is wrong, but this illustrates a common disconnect between creating advocacy and creating buzz through a contest (or any initiative, really).

Buzz is people talking about you.

Buzz can be positive or negative. Buzz is momentum. Buzz is what it sounds like – a bunch of voices talking about your product.

Buzz can definitely be good – people want to be in the loop, and if everyone is talking about something, they want to know about it too.

Buzz can be bad – people can be saying bad things about your product, or buzzing about the buzz-creating campaign itself, not your product. Buzz guarantees conversation, but not what kind.

Advocacy is people who like you talking about you.

Advocacy is people who care about your product talking about it to other people. Actively, without a campaign urging them to.

Advocacy is always good (but not always easy to get). Advocacy may not be as loud as Buzz (though it can be), but it’s far more effective.

Ways to get Buzz:

• Do something outrageous
• Do something controversial
• Give away a lot of money/prizes
• Get someone well-known to talk about your product

Ways to get Advocacy:

• Build a fantastic product
• Show your customers the same respect and support you’d like them to show you
• Establish relationships: between you and your customers and between customers (people desire validation from others when they like something)
• Give away something of only of value to your community (so only those that actually like you already get involved)
• Do something generous for your community

There’s a great slide in this ESSENTIAL deck that says “whether someone can be influenced is as important as the strength of the influencer.” In other words, for all the talk of influencers on the web, it depends on whether the people they’re exerting influence on can actually be influenced. And as the research in the aforementioned deck (and a million other places online) says, people are most influenced by their closest friends. Advocacy (one-to-one, personal) vs Buzz (many-to-many, impersonal).

So the question is not whether prizes are bad or not – the question is whether you’re trying to create Buzz or Advocacy. They seem similar, but they are in fact very different beasts.

Do you agree? What are your examples of successfully getting Buzz or Advocacy?

Photo courtesty of David Blaikie.