Over this past week I’ve been helping a federal government agency here in Canberra to work out how to engage citizens in the new, Web 2.0, social computing way. It’s been a lot of fun and draws on disciplines you wouldn’t have normally thought of when engaging a web-type consultant (like me), but I felt I needed to teach them some new tricks so they could enter this new world.
1. Psychology of behavioural change
When the government wants to inform the community it normally creates incredibly accurate information and then publishes it, in print and online — the online version mostly a reflection of the print media brochure. Instead, we’ve drawn on theories like the Transtheoretical Model of Behavioural Change. When you want to not only inform decision making behaviour but ensure that it leads to long-term behavioural change, this model is the one to inform how you create your communications strategy. Importantly, it says you need to reinforce the behaviour to ensure that people know what they’re doing is the right thing. This model also reminds us that it takes a long time to make a decision about something.
2. Sociology of online environments
Forrester first indicated that there’s more to consumption of online material than just being a passive spectator. There are many roles that need fulfilling when you want to interact with people online. People like to:
i Create
ii Criticise
iii Collect
iv Join
They also like to just spectate and then there are some who are inactive and are not interested at all. The secret to a successful website for online engagement is to how which interactions you want to encourage and then support them with Web 2.0-style widgets within the page that connects them to other people.
3. Psychology of trust
Importantly, if you’re going to deliver a message, you want to ensure that people believe it. Edelman’s researchover the last five years shows that people trust people like themselves. But how do you build trust in online environments when there’s no physical cues to help? It comes first with identity — the human face behind the interaction.
4. Psychology of group-dynamics
People behave according to the unwritten rules of the group — their norms. Creating thought leaders and allowing them to set the norms will encourage people who are like-minded, who identify with the group and its values, to join. If anyone steps out of line with the group norms, e.g. flames someone or comments inappropriately, the group will reinforce its own rules on that person in order to stop the unwanted behaviour. In essence, norms help the group self-regulate.
5. Psychology of communication
Language is an important identifier of who you are. If you want to draw certain people into a group, whether online or otherwise, you need to know what language, words, phrases, and even jargon, will attract them and what language will repel them. Use these words, rather than those of your organisation, to create the navigation labels and content classification scheme for the website.
6. Cognitive psychology
In his presentation to ACTKM08, Dave Snowden suggested that the found the most useful source of intelligence during the Iraq War was the field commanders blogs. Modern theories of memory suggest this is because we store and retrieve information in our brains in chunks and then let our brains sort out relationships between those memories. The stronger the associative strength between items the better and easier the recall. The lessons is to ensure that when giving people information to empower them to make decisions that short snippets of information in context is the most efficient way for them to store and then retrieve information. If you’re wanting to arm people with information to make decisions then this is the most efficient means of doing it — not by giving them a manual.
7. Knowledge management and storytelling
Storytelling is a powerful way of relating a personal experience that people can identify with and learn from. Knowledge management is full of techniques to draw upon that can help thought leaders in emerging virtual communities to pass on what they know, and how they know it, in order to educate and facilitate behavioural change in others.
If you’re creating new online environments, don’t just turn to wikis and blogs and the cool graphic designer who’ll come up with a funky name. There’s more to building successful online communities as a way of engaging stakeholders than meets the eye.
M
Posted by magia3e 
