Being Involved in the Process is The Reward!

Johnnie Moore has a great post about bzzagent. He has been a pretty vocal critic of them. He met up with Dave Balter recently and learned this...

I still have my doubts about some aspects, but I was impressed by the thoroughness with which Dave has implemented the idea. He's got 75,000 people signed up, and I was interested that he finds most of them are not taking up the reward points they get for their work. He's obviously doing something that appeals to intrinsic motivation. He's thinking of stopping the reward system, or swapping to making charitable donations which I think is a smart idea.

The point about the rewards not being redeemed is quite interesting. And it got me thinking about our own experience with our points based system for rewarding people that spread the word about events.

We haven't had as much uptake on our concept of inviting friends to events in exchange for prizes and have done some significant studying of the issue.  Of course, there are people that are more than willing to spread the word about something for the chance to win a prize or for a direct reward. And we work with a handful of event promoters that will promote for cash.  But, on the whole, we were hoping for more "uptake".

We have had luck with getting people to Buzz about events when we engage enough people in the planning. We've used a discussion board to solicit event ideas, get volunteers, make decisions.  And this whole process gets everyone excited about the actual event. Because they are part of the planning.

I also recently met one of the founders of Quiet Tantrum and the basis of their street team software is very similar to BzzAgent where people are given information about an album or a show and asked to report back how they spread the word. When they report back, they earn prizes. And they've had great success in getting people signed up to street teams. They've also associated themselves with some bands that have "made" it. And I'd imagine that most of the street team people spread the word because they are very passionate about the band and most of the prizes revolve around getting things that get them closer to the band, like special releases, backstage passes, etc.

But, what gets the average person to spread the word? We all do it.  What motivates us to do it?

Dave Balter's lessons and my observation suggests that there is an intrinsic reward in participating in a bzz campaign or spreading buzz about an event or a band in Quiet Tantrum's case.

The Intrinsic Motivation For Word of Mouth is Being Part of the Process.

A key feature of BzzAgent's and Quiet Tantrum's application is the reporting feature. BzzAgent's are awarded the opportunity to participate in a campaign. When they do, they are encouraged to share their experience with the Hive.  The application tells them to share their experience, so they'll get their points.

But, my hypothesis is that: the simple act of collaborating with the person in charge (the hive, band, event planner) that is interested in the feedback and will use the advice for future improvement is enough reward for the participant.

That is what breeds loyalty: Getting feedback and using it to create a better experience.

Comments

[Johnnie Moore]

Yes, that's about it. We don't really want to be bought. We want to play.

I think this is pretty cool.