For the record this is in no way an attack on the techniques in general. There will almost certainly be companies I work for in the future that use them and Good chance i recommend to people they use them ;) I'mAll for using psychology in advertising and outreach just here i am skeptical of how certain types (but not all!) fit our voice (which is still open and developing and likely always will be! Obviously it's not my voice it's much larger then that 😉 )
Sent from my iPhoneJames AlexanderLegal and Community AdvocacyWikimedia FoundationThanks Jeff,Late to the party because today sucks but in general I'm incredibly confidant in the psychology of "like if you X" type posts (they'll engage more people) so honest I'm not even sure we need a whole lot of A/B testing or, before we do, we should discuss (probably in a separate thread :) ) the larger question. Does it matter?If we're going to continue to do which ever wins out of A vs B test then doing the test makes sense, if we might continue to do it depending on if the winner is by a large margin then maybe it makes sense, if we think that B is against our voice, mission, morals or whatever and so we shouldn't really do it anyway then we probably shouldn't do the test because it's only asking us to stretch our comfort range or morals.On a personal level I love engagement posts and want to see more of them! Personally I'd love to be sitting in a war room/in a big hangout for a couple hours and have a bunch of us responding on twitter and facebook to our own posts and others! However I think posts that fall into the more "pavlov's dog" type requests ("like if you've ever" being an example) should be avoided as much as possible because I think they go against our own internal voice and personality where asking a question of ourFacebook followers, answering someone elses trivia question on twitter or engaging someone to fix an article does not. There are times where the interplay with our mission (#freebasel etc) makes sense but otherwise I'd stay away from them 😊.If we decide that these are ok then by all means we should A/B the hell out of them, for those that don't know I was part of the 2010 (and 11) fundraising teams that pioneered using A/B testing within the foundation and am a strong believer in it. However one of the best arguments against the Fundraising team both then and now was the concern (whether rightly or wrongly, but not always wrong at least in my opinion back then) where we would always take which ever "won" (in our case more money) mostly ignoring other concerns about our culture and voice. That led to a creeping tendency to get more in your face and closer and closer over the line (while the line itself starts to move). That led me to believe that human nature will make it really hard not to choose B if B does better, so we shouldn't add B to the test unless we're completely ok with choosing it :).
Sent from my iPhoneJames AlexanderLegal and Community AdvocacyWikimedia FoundationThe post has been up for 5 minutes and has 367 likes and 145 comments.Jeff ElderDigital communications managerWikimedia FoundationOn Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 9:24 AM, Michael Guss <mguss@wikimedia.org> wrote:LGTM.On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 9:02 AM, Gregory Varnum <greg.varnum@gmail.com> wrote:LGTM-greg_______________Sent from my iPhone - a more detailed response may be sent later.What if we did: Click like if you don't like "click like" posts on Facebook. : )
This is a great discussion, the kind I'd like to have more of on our Facebook page.How about, seriously, if we do:Have you ever looked up a celebrity on Wikipedia? Who?
On Thursday, October 15, 2015, Andrew Sherman <asherman@wikimedia.org> wrote:I agree with all of this. I think we should test to come up with a solution.best,AndrewOn Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 10:59 AM, Joe Sutherland <jsutherland@wikimedia.org> wrote:I'm fine if you want to test this out. What I personally think, and what testing shows, are often two very different things ;)best,JoeOn 15 October 2015 at 15:20, Gregory Varnum <greg.varnum@gmail.com> wrote:I’ll offer my two cents having seen this discussion play out a few times with political movements - so disclaimer that there are differences and what works for some may not work for us. Anyway…I personally think that things like “Please R/T” or “Click like” will be seen as engagement strategies and avoided by users. However, each time I’ve seen this debate play out in an A/B test, the strategies do work. Usually for things that were opinions - “Like if you support XYZ issue” or “R/T if you agree that ABC should happen”. When the same graphic or article was posted on two FB Pages of similar size and scope, we would continuously see that messages which ask for engagement got more engagement.I’m not sure if this is something where those working in communications are so familiar with the strategies we question if they will work, or we just see them so much we get tired of them ourselves. Sort of like LGBT activists tendency to dislike the rainbow a few years into the work. ;) Or it’s a situation where we say we won’t do something - like buy newspapers that talk about scandals - but our behavior when we are not analyzing things betrays us (sales of newspapers featuring scandals go through the roof).Either way, my hunch is that the requests, when attached to the right kind of message, do engage more folks (despite my personal feelings toward that). I agree a discussion and possibly testing of this concept is a good idea. As always, it is possible Wikimedians are the exception to the rule. ;)-gregOn Oct 15, 2015, at 10:07 AM, Jeff Elder <jelder@wikimedia.org> wrote:It's a good discussion. Our reach dwindles to as low as 30,000 (of our 5 million fans) if we just push out our links. Then everything suffers: blog traffic, page growth, engagement, etc. Conversely, highly engaged posts raise everything. And we have to remember our Facebook fans, especially recent ones, are mostly readers not editors, and are looking to connect with us.
On Thursday, October 15, 2015, Andrew Sherman <asherman@wikimedia.org> wrote:I totally understand what you mean and would really enjoy discussing those uses of "click like" or "comment below" :).I think they can work I just am unfamiliar with what situations we use them for, when it's not redundant etc.Otherwise LGTM.
On Thursday, October 15, 2015, Jeff Elder <jelder@wikimedia.org> wrote:Those are good points. I suppose people can click like to just indicate yes. My experience is that online and social media veterans bristle a bit at "click like," but a lot of people also do it. Our audience is very diverse, and seems to embrace basic common denominators. So I'd rather not rule it out uniformly. But I see the point today. So:Have you ever looked up a celebrity on Wikipedia? Who?All in favor? Opposed?
On Thursday, October 15, 2015, Andrew Sherman <asherman@wikimedia.org> wrote:I also kinda agree. I watch a lot of youtube and it might be personal but the whole action of asking for engagement kinda turns me off ("subscribe if you want more content, click like to let me know what you think", etc).I think the proposed question "have you ever looked up a celebrity on Wikipedia?" is sufficient enough to get engagement; maybe even ask why or what did you find out to the question.On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 9:35 AM, Joe Sutherland <jsutherland@wikimedia.org> wrote:I'm not sure I like "Click like if..." personally, seems kind of cheap. And surely everyone's looked up a celebrity one time or another?_______________________________________________Click like if you have ever looked up a celebrity on Wikipedia. If you remember one, we'd love to hear who in a comment.Thoughts? Engagement is a goal right now, and getting our large audience of mostly readers more involved.
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