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It can seem strange that people would volunteer their precious time to contribute their thoughts, opinions, expertise or resources for your benefit.  How do you encourage such behavior?

Answers to the question

For active contribution, the best answer for this is on the page Why contributors contribute.  It turns out people want to contribute for a variety of reasons (social reward, altruism, recognition, etc.).  You just need to provide a platform for them to do it.  Here are some other tips: 

• Seed the contributions first with a small pilot group of enthusiasts before exposing it very broadly
• Try to avoid over-moderating, let the community members police themselves so they feel more ownership
• Recognize your super-contributors
• Color their name differently or place a "badge" (small logo) next to their name
• Give them a space (e.g. part of your website) where only they can go
• Communicate with them directly and thank them for their contributions

For passive contribution, you need to create compelling value so that people use your site, product or service.  They then contribute their behavior or other resources automatically.

- Gerald Huff

Make it easy to contribute and give various ways to contribute. On amazon the most active contributers can write a review and rate it. The less active user however can also cast a vote by letting the system if they found the review helpful or not. Also let the user see up-front how many people reviewed. This can persuade them (social proof) that contributing is the new social norm.

Award small contributions, to get users started. 

A new visitor to the site might be shy enough to only 'star' a page, or 'like' a page. But, awarding a badge like "First Starred Page", or "5 liked pages" is an easy way to award small contributions, and encourage more. 

-Jessica

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