Let’s say you’re a kid again. You and your friends in the neighborhood have played together at the local playground and at various other kid’s houses around your neighborhood. One day, you notice that the house down the street that’s been for sale forever seems to have new occupants. You look around for new kids that might live in the house, but you realize the couple that has moved in is an older couple that doesn’t appear to have any. Yet, inexplicably, a few days later you see a marvelous new treehouse in that big tree in their front yard. It wasn’t there before, but it’s there now with a great big sign: “Welcome Neighborhood Kids – Please Play in Our Treehouse.” What do you think? Strange perhaps? Even a bit sinister (you’ve heard all those campfire stories)? Definitely and most assuredly it’s creepy.
I first heard the term creepy treehouse a couple of years ago when I was facilitating a discovery session at a university. For those of you not in Higher Education, it’s a term that apparently originated in 2008 and refers to social media sites built by universities and intended for use by students. It has been suggested (and probably rightly so) that student adoption of many of these social media “solutions” is often low because students view them as creepy treehouses: something built by unknown adults to try to lure unsuspecting kids for possibly nefarious reasons.
There’s a bit of a creepy treehouse problem faced by most social media sites, not just ones in a university environment. Consider those social networking sites sponsored and hosted by companies but intended for use by their client base (and prospective clients). An immediate barrier to entry on the part of many first-time visitors is “Why should I engage in conversation with this company? Aren’t they just trying to get my contact information so they can try to sell me more stuff (or sell my name to some other company I’m not interested in)?”
How does a company—looking to legitimately engage its client base for reasons other than simple marketing—overcome this “creepy treehouse” effect? Perhaps the best way is to make a couple of things quite clear from the outset.
First: What is the motivation of the visitor to participate? Will they gain knowledge that they can’t gain anywhere else? Will they be able to gain recognition from other visitors (or members) that participate in the site? Will they be able to make better buying decisions? Will they get coupons or discounts for participating? Being upfront and obvious about the value proposition (sorry, I hate that term even though I feel obligated to use it) for the participant is important. Value must be apparent not just from explicit statements on the site about potential rewards but also in the way the site works: it has to function in ways that obviously and immediately make visitors realize the value of their participation.
Second and perhaps more importantly, the visitor must feel a strong measure of trust in the site. Obvious settings and explanations that allow the visitor to control privacy settings, for instance, is one way to achieve trust. Prominent methods and explanations of moderation rules should be available to assure visitors that their participation is both valued and protected. Having the ability for a visitor to send a message to an actual person and have a reasonable expectation of a meaningful response is also important. Being able to see evidence that other visitors/member trust the site is also an important element. As with perceived value, the trust elements of the site must be obvious.
There are, of course, many other elements besides value and trust to building a successful social networking site, and I’ll be blogging about some of them in future posts. For now, if you’re building or renovating a social media site, you may find it a valuable exercise to try to view your site as the creepy treehouse that first-time visitors are apt to see, and set in place elements to overcome that effect. Otherwise you might find your beautiful new treehouse vandalized and spray painted with all manner of objectionable graffiti. Or perhaps worse yet, it may sit empty and alone while visitors flock to other sites.
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