InfluenceUsOrganizingTheProcess

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OurWork (2) InfluenceUsOrganizingTheProcess / InfluenceUsOrganizingTheProcess (Asad, Saad)
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People working on this

Asad, Saad, Ted

How does this build community?

This helps us drive engagement from the community and gives credibility to our core customer.

Why this is important?

Engagement: Makes a clear call to action for motivated visitors.
BeABuilder: Encourages the kind of constructive collaboration we want where all involved parties benefit.
ValuableContent: Creates public conversations that deeply inform future visitors about how organizations relate with those they touch.
ViralSpiral: The influenced become influencers the next time they are frustrated with an organization.

Discussion and Useful Links

  • Analyze InfluenceUs stats and maintain metrics(?)

Analysis

Feel free to add your own observations here or suggest alternates. --Sa'ad : msg me : email : 22:14, 12 February 2008 (PST)

  • Site owners Influencing themselves: A lot of times site owners influence themselves and leave a review of their own. Such comments should be removed with a message to reviewer to use Recent Visitors wikibox unless they specifically ask in their review to leave them feedback.
    • Perhaps these could be left where they are, and modified to identify the person as the site owner?
    • Updated InfluenceUs Template so it makes more obvious for the purpose of this tool.
  • People requesting Fixname: Such comments should also be removed after applying a fixname as they have nothing to do with Influence Us.
  • People leaving FeatureMe discussion comments: Move the comment under the featured discussion section of that page and remove it from Influence Us.
  • Site Messaging - how do people know that InfluenceUs exists or what it's about? How are we teaching people the difference between a frustrated comment seeking some redress and a rant that's not helpful for anyone?
    • InfluenceUs Button, making it more prominent: The most important first step is to make InfluenceUs more prominent on all domain pages and it looks like we have tools available for it too. The problem only is defining the way we move forward with this. Let's start with the tools we have right now: Considering the fact that we claim to give to our core customer visibility and credibility with their customers so that they can get new customers, and we also have as, one of our aims increasing the engagement of community members, I strongly believe in the need to have InfluenceUs more prominent in order to make it clear that this is a significant feature of AboutUs. Right now InfluenceUs is integrated in the skin in a way that does not make it very prominent. Now we do have the tools to make it more prominent. Check out: testinfluenceus.com. The thumb image on the can be clicked to open the pop up for InfluenceUs. The way we could use this to make InfluenceUs more prominent is to have it in the domain box template. The problem however is that there are also plans to make a better InfluenceUs button integrated in the skin too. So should we have it the domain box way at least for as long as the new button is not ready or should we just wait. I personally think we should have it in go for it right now to see if we have more people clicking it. Asad | *~talk~* 23:59, 12 February 2008 (PST)
      • With the tools that are ready right now, I think we can make 'InfluenceUs more prominent on domain pages.
      • The domain page boiler plate code can be updated with the InfluenceUs section and the template Template:InfluenceUs already in it? But we need this tested in to avoid a conflict where InfluenceUs wizard ignores a manually added section and inserts another new section right under it. --Sa'ad : msg me : email : 23:39, 25 February 2008 (PST)
    • Update the badge popup from external sites to encourage use of InfluenceUs.
  • Encourage transition from writing community reviews to using InfluenceUs
  • Folks mistaking us as the actual company: This http://www.aboutus.org/LottoHiddenSecrets.com is happening sometimes and when it does its the person who left the comment may think they have contacted the company already. I think we need to make it clear that we are not affiliated or associated with anybody. The InfluenceUs popup needs revision. Leaving task for dev. --Sa'ad : msg me : email : 21:25, 27 February 2008 (PST)
  • InfluenceUs on Adult Pages: While there might be some situations where InfluenceUs comments on Adult pages make sense, I don't think we will benefit by engaging these people. Comments like these however, should be removed: Terrorgasm.com. Thoughts? Asad | *~talk~* 20:43, 28 February 2008 (PST)
    • I am not sure why we would remove any constructive edit, including to a possibly adult content page. Kasey
    • I agree. If it's constructive, why would we remove it? TedErnst (talk)
      • Yest constructive comments shouldn't be removed from any page. Asad | *~talk~* 09:10, 5 March 2008 (PST)

InfluenceUs in today's AboutUs business climate

What are we trying to achieve with InfluenceUs? Have things changed with respect to InfluenceUs in the last few weeks of understanding what business we are in?

  • From the begininng of AboutUs, we were hoping to create a place for collaboration. This means constructive edits that are then answered by someone else, etc. Community review, even when negative, could thus be about postive collaboration and such. This hasn't worked thusfar. And we don't seem to have time to wait for it to work.

one to one

There are two different one to one issues.

  • Watching Changes for unconstructive frustrateds
    • Analysis:
      • Currently we are having about 3 delighted to every 2 frustrated comments. We can watch for unconstructive frustrated during our regular RC or just by going through the InfluenceUs Log should work.
      • In future, we can (after the CompostUs), this part can also be automated by giving an option to the website owner or somebody else to "Report Abuse" or "Report Unconstructive" comments. This will show up in the log or we can even have an email sent to us whenever someone reports a problem.
      • This is mostly done manually and there is no telling if someone 'replies' back to a message. Even if you put that domain page in your watch list, the comments get added as a transclude and the replies to it seem to be added into that transclusion. This means you wont catch it in your watchlist if a comment has been made to a page you are watching. Atleast thats what i think is happening. This is all the more reason we need a Report Abuse section for InfluenceUs comments. --Sa'ad talk|email|chat 06:26, 11 March 2008 (PDT)
    • Next actions
      • One point of view is that this is our only commitment right now, and that we don't even have to be contacting companies. Agree?
  • Contacting companies
    • Analysis:
      • Contacting companies one by one is a learning process that will inform how we do the automated process, once that's ready. This is not for long-term, just to learn, short-term. We have and will have maybe 2 months worth of InfluenceUs comments from when we rolled it out until we have the new system. So let's work on those as a learning experience.
      • We are going to have a new system at the back end soon which will allow us to send emails to the companies which have been Influenced so this will be "zero to one" rather than "one to one" and we don't need to worry about it. That's the long term thing and the dev people think this email will reach in to 70% people (which is more than satisfactory).
    • Next actions - This is today a one to one process and as such, is only about piloting a future automated process.
      • What have we learned so far?
        • We loose a bulk of messages (as we did not get many reply back messages)
        • Consequence of not contacting companies is that many people will leave influence us comment thinking they have contacted the company. Granted they are using the wrong tool to begin with but then that means we need to clarify better what influence us and how it should be used in our site messaging. --Sa'ad talk|email|chat 06:17, 11 March 2008 (PDT)
      • Only after we have answered the above question: Before we do any more, let's clearly say what we hope to learn.

Engagement?

  • I don't see any reason to contact the company for delighted responses. Why would they care? How will that lead to engagement? TedErnst (talk) 13:05, 5 March 2008 (PST)
    • The mere fact that we have something to say to them, and we say it, constitutes engagement. Even ten delighted comments a day, are ten opportunities to engage them and, to be sure, they are ten more than we had previously, and we need to capitalize on that. Asad | *~talk~* 22:10, 5 March 2008 (PST)
    • Also another reason we ought to contact companies about delighted comments because it gives them a chance to see what they are doing good and to continue doing it. Just as we celebrate it when someone mentions something good about us on their blog, what do we do, we link to it, we go on their domain page and contribute to it. And in this case, there's not only a chance that they will work on their page to improve it, they can even sign up for the PromoteMyCompany offer. So, contacting companies about positive feedback is equally as important as contacting them about the negative. --Sa'ad talk|email|chat 22:38, 5 March 2008 (PST)
    • Okay, I'm convinced about engagement, once we get past the one to one problem. TedErnst (talk) 03:42, 6 March 2008 (PST)

ethics with regards to our paying customers

  • Replying to such feedback on a neutral platform like AboutUs is always...- how so?
  • Let's explore our neutrality; do we not want to facilitate criticism of our clients? Is this project at odds with PromoteUs?
  • How would a constructive, yet frustrated comment on Stoel Rives be dealt with?
    • I think the answer is obvious. Yes we should allow constructive, yet frustrated comments even on a page for the company that sponsors us, or one that signs up for the PromoteMyCompany offer.
    • We should also coach / provide guidance to our wiki customer on how to handle this feedback because it gives an opportunity show transparency. This can be reflected in:
      • Update the Getting Started guide with an example showing Promote Me to work. i.e. someone leaving a constructive delighted comment and a constructive frustrated comment, and underneath it a response from the company.
  • Companies pay money not because they like to pay it but because they have to. They pay money because they know their message will get to people who trust the people they are paying. Our focus therefore, should be the people to come to us rather than the companies that pays us because again, they are paying us because we can convey their message to people in a credible way. It turns out that we two ways of keeping the sponsors on our side. First, don't let anybody say against them. Second, allow people to say what they want about them and make your sponsor pay you for what he wants to say to them. The reason I think this second one is a good option is that this preserves our strength to be a two way communication platform. Even more importantly, what reason do the visitors have to visit our website if we don't allow them to say all they want to, and consequently, what's the reason for the sponsors to pay us? To sum this up, it's the visitors that are our strength, and they make sure that the sponsors keep wanting to pay us.

Example Comment in the InfluenceUs section after CompostUs

Instead of leaving the InfluenceUs section empty after the CompostUs, we should have an example comment in it. The obvious advantages of this little move will be 1) it will make it clear at first sight what this section is all about. 2) It will encourage people to add there their own comment. ( This should be done in the ConnectUs section also).

recommendations

  1. Teach how to leave reviews:
  2. Via video, screencasts: from user/editor perspective AND from that of the company (how to respond, and why bother to...)
  3. In the InfluenceUs section on all domain pages after CompostUs, we should have an example comment in order to encourage people to write their own.
Next step storyboard the films (one for company and one for customers)

comments

Outcomes from this task

Review InfluenceUs Log on a daily basis

  • Make it a habit to go through the InfluenceUs Log and review the days edits weeding out all nonconstructive edits,
  • Contact the organization whose page has been influenced(?)
    • Document what you have done, such as the email you sent to the company.
    • Add Category:Influenced
  • Review refactoring to make the comments constructive(?)
  • See trends in comments (and make notes in Analysis)
  • Find out ways in which InfluenceUs can be made to fulfill its purpose of Engagement better.

Done When

This task will be done when all current comments on the InfluenceUs Log have been processed and relevant companies have been sent an email informing them about comments on their pages.

Blog post

  • Writing a blog post about InfluenceUs
    • Extract a case study to showcase where someone left an influence us comment and the owner responded to the feedback.

Guide to handle InfluenceUs webmasters/owners

Definitions

  • Write definitions and make pretty the page for various terms used in this process. such as Delighted, frustrated etc

Recommendations for dev

  1. InfluenceUs extension for Companies to respond to messages. More on it here.
  2. Beta version of sending replies to InfluenceUs messages. http://influenceustwo.aboutustest.org/testinfluenceus.com
  3. Currently when someone uses InfluenceUs, their message is simply inserted into the page with no indication of what Influence Us is about. Perhaps InfluenceUs heading can be turned into a WikiLink to InfluenceUs It was faster to just ask and have it implemented. Better yet, Arif says he can make the heading Influence Us function just like a button so if you click it, it would pop up the wizard.
    1. This wont apply to existing pages, so the following code needs to be added manually replacing the headings. ==<span class="influenceus-links">Influence Us</span>==
  4. Add persons signature so that it's easier for the reader to respond to the person? - Ray | talk
  5. When the current date section of the influence us log is open for manual edit (we do it to remove test comments) AND someone makes an influence us comment at the same time, what normally should happen is the person would get an edit conflict if they were editing a normal wiki. But at the moment, if the there is an edit conflict there is an explosion of code. Recommendations for now, avoid editing the current date and the whole wiki page itself, instead remove test comments from a day before as there is always a chance that someone makes an influence us comment right when you were editing the page.
  6. Change the wizard code so that when transcluding it adds {{InfluenceUs}} instead of {{Template:InfluenceUs}}
  7. Next Action(s) for InfluenceUs v2.0: Incorporate webmasters to be able to leave influence us comments for the community. The reason being that owners have been leaving comments about their products and services, as they try to influence the community. This behavior is not what InfluenceUs was made for but is a trend that ive noticed which i think we can try to facilitate. Engagement should be both ways. --Sa'ad : msg me : email : 23:28, 26 February 2008 (PST)
  8. feature request - when I add a comment anywhere, either myself or in reply, this should put all the pages that are edited onto my watchlist
  9. feature request - make influence us remotely linkable from external sites or provide easy to find instructions on how to do so.
  10. Add to InfluenceUs popup a small note: AboutUs is not affiliated or related to the organization you are about to influence.
  11. An InflucenUs popup bug has been noticed. When people click the InfluenceUs from domain toolbox or from the comments, the influenceUs wizard may not appear to work. But infact it opens at the very top of the window and the user has to scroll up to see it. This needs fixing to accomodate for IE and for FF. Dev has been notified of this. --Sa'ad : msg me : email : 23:34, 27 February 2008 (PST)
    1. Since the dev people say this might take some time to fix because of the problem with IE, let's just change the formatting to make it appear somewhere higher in the domain box, maybe at the top or before the DomainTools.com, Compete.com, and BuiltWith.com links. See how this might look like, here. Asad | *~talk~* 01:21, 28 February 2008 (PST)
    2. The reply button needs tweaking as well so it throws window focus to the top. --Sa'ad : msg me : email : 23:29, 3 March 2008 (PST)
  12. InfluenceUs does not work in Firefox3 beta3. I know its in beta, but we wanna keep it on the radar that our stuff works.
  13. InfluenceUs comments cannot be replied to directly from user pages where all of them are listed. One has to go to the domain page itself where the comment was left and only then the reply function works. --Sa'ad : msg me : email : 23:29, 3 March 2008 (PST)
  14. No cursor in FF when replying to comment. --Sa'ad : msg me : email : 23:34, 3 March 2008 (PST)


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