Video: Turn your users into Superheroes

I stumbled upon this video of Kathy Sierra once again today:

She insists on 2 things:

  • You need to make your users feel great about what they do and how they do it by gifting them with a superpower
  • If you teach people how to become better at what they want to do, they will sell themselves on your product
Once you've done that, they'll become very happy and will talk positively about your company. Once you get people hooked into your system and they can acknowledge its value first-hand, it's much easier to have them pay for your service.

This is also linked to my previous post on single utility in a social system.

Article: Building It Is Not Enough - 5 Practical Tips On User Acquisition

Some interesting advice in there. I especially like the part about "not being afraid to pay for users":

Every, and I mean every, acquisition channel costs money. It is just a question of whether the cost is direct or indirect. Channels such as PPC obviously have a direct cost. However channels such as SEO and Viral are commonly seen as "free" channels. They aren't.

From http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/82788/Building-It-Is-Not-Enough-5-Practical-Tips-On-User-Acquisition.aspx

Article: Single User Utility In A Social System

Great insight:

So I encourage the product teams in our portfolio to think hard about building single person utility into their products. Its a paradox of sorts but by making sure its useful to just one person you are insuring its useful to tens of millions of people.

This is especially true for collaborative applications. Asana does this very well with tasks: the service is great even if you're the only one using it. And its value still increases significantly when you start adding more people.

Read it in full at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AVc/~3/hQS2QeIfdFc/single-user-utility-in-a-so...