The 1% Rule
Reading a book titled "Citizen Marketers" by a couple of old acquaintances, Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell. They talk about the impact of social networks on products / brands / companies.
They talk about the 1% rule... the percentage of your audience who are also content creators. A couple of examples from the book: (1) Wikipedia. In June 2005, 7.4 million people visited Wikipedia, but only 68,682 contributed content or changes. That's about 0.9%. (2) Quickbooks community is an online forum that helps Intuit customers address software and accounting challenges. Of the 100,000 visitors in July 2006, 900 of them created new content threads.
This immediately reminded me of a post Adam left a month back about the challenge of forming an informal "innovation network"... people sharing their ideas, lessons, approaches in the name of furthering knowledge of innovation. I think the 1% rule is at the heart of the challenge. Most people want to consume content, they don't want to create it. You have to build up a lot of critical mass for the 1% to be self-sustaining.
Take this blog for example. We have a very small readership, and so consequently, more than 1% of us are "creators". But, it is essentially a running dialogue between a handful of people. We don't have the critical mass to be self-sustaining. If one of us drops out of the conversation, we lose a lot of momentum. And so the challenge with the "innovation network" - to build enough momentum that it takes on a life of its own. If we can figure out how to do it, I sure would love to be a part of it.
Anyway, bottom-line, be aware of the 1% rule. Find the 1% of people in a network who create content and leverage them, inform them, empower them. Where else have you seen this in practice? Where has the 1% been effectively tapped? Is there any way to engage / expand beyond that core group?
They talk about the 1% rule... the percentage of your audience who are also content creators. A couple of examples from the book: (1) Wikipedia. In June 2005, 7.4 million people visited Wikipedia, but only 68,682 contributed content or changes. That's about 0.9%. (2) Quickbooks community is an online forum that helps Intuit customers address software and accounting challenges. Of the 100,000 visitors in July 2006, 900 of them created new content threads.
This immediately reminded me of a post Adam left a month back about the challenge of forming an informal "innovation network"... people sharing their ideas, lessons, approaches in the name of furthering knowledge of innovation. I think the 1% rule is at the heart of the challenge. Most people want to consume content, they don't want to create it. You have to build up a lot of critical mass for the 1% to be self-sustaining.
Take this blog for example. We have a very small readership, and so consequently, more than 1% of us are "creators". But, it is essentially a running dialogue between a handful of people. We don't have the critical mass to be self-sustaining. If one of us drops out of the conversation, we lose a lot of momentum. And so the challenge with the "innovation network" - to build enough momentum that it takes on a life of its own. If we can figure out how to do it, I sure would love to be a part of it.
Anyway, bottom-line, be aware of the 1% rule. Find the 1% of people in a network who create content and leverage them, inform them, empower them. Where else have you seen this in practice? Where has the 1% been effectively tapped? Is there any way to engage / expand beyond that core group?