You need to have a critical mass of questions and answers in the system at an early stage, says Orbital s Kallus. In some cases you may need to seed the community to make it interesting and effective. You may also need encouragement and incentives for organisational users to participate in the question and answer sessions. You can do this with rewards, beans, or gift vouchers. Sometimes the best motivation can be the participation itself.
People like to be seen as experts.
Some users are not, by nature, information sharing, says Holz. They want to know what s in it for them. They want to get in to get information quickly and get back out. A lot of times they see that information as competitive advantage. But because we ve put in the structure and we are about accountability for quality of content, people come here because it will help them close more business or raise their utilisation rates.