we’re busy trying to figure out what the guest experience is going to look like on bettr@ and what the hook might be to get someone to join an already awesome content aggregation site.
obviously, we think that guidance and mentorship is a huge part of informal learning, but is it large enough to warrant the thrust of our user marketing effort?
i think of me, in the real world, and in cyberspace, and my willingness to give advice about something. i certainly think that it goes up the more i feel like i am an expert. secondly i have to know that people actually want and will value the advice i given them.
maybe this is my design bias, but I think that having a dead simple interface to shoot quick advice or guidance along with a few “indices” into relevant material are great. for instance, if someone asks me for a restaurant reco in Ann Arbor (like Ido did earlier this evening), i say go to ______ and eat _______ , and maybe link him to the url of the restaurant menu or to yelp’s listing.
but that’s a basic example. if someone asked me for advice on what kind of bicycle to get (not that i’m a huge expert) but i’d probably point them to a series of links, including sheldon brown’s famous page.
…and throw them some of my own written advice as well– the written advice shows some personal effort and makes the advice “sticky” to use Chip Heath terminology. it shows that I, the advisor actually cares enough to share my own thoughts on bicycle selection. the fact that someone asked me as an expert gives me credibility.
certainly the next level of this is allowing the mentor or advisor to profit from the advice given. depending on the profit, this might increase the number of people that will advise. if so, this needs to be a key message to convert guests into users.
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