Dan Pink and I were exchanging emails the other day about his new book, DRIVE. He he wrote something that was quite insightful (not surprising, of course) about the nature of fans and community.
“actually, come to think of it, there's a connection between community driven marketing and motivation 3.0. after all, raving fans are not getting remunerated directly; they're acting autonomously and passionately out of a broader sense of purpose and desire.”
I cannot tell you the number of times I hear people mistake cultivation (step 2) for “incentivize.”
Your true fans are acting out of the same intrinsic motivation the Dan focuses on in his book.
They are not fans because of the money. They are fans because of the passion.
Once you start saying, “ah, we have our fans, now let’s go say ‘if you do this, then I will do this,” you begin to sap the core passion that motivates your Raving Fans.
Motivation 3.0, as Dan calls it, is understanding what gets people excited naturally and then playing to those strengths, not defaulting to a “carrot and stick” management model which works less and less for employees and certainly won’t work well for a group of sincere volunteer evangelists.
Instead, understand what lies at the core of their desire “why did you even bother to become a fan? What do you want to get out of it?”
Then, listen.
Then, act to cultivate.
Finally, figure out how to activate based on their desires, not yours.