We’ve been so busy dealing with the technical issues of mycolts.net that we haven’t had much time to execute our community building tactics.
One such tactic is a social currency we call “Colts Cred”, which is a reputation system that assigns each community member a rating based on how often their content gets viewed and how highly it gets ranked by other users. Recently some users starting grumbling because they didn’t understand exactly how their “cred” was being calculated. So we took some steps to clarify the system, adjusted the algorithm, and things are starting to make more sense now.
Here’s a screen shot of our Colts Cred “leader board”.
As you can see, fans can earn “cred” in four categories of activity (blogs, profile, surveys and photos). Our hope is that this reputation system will grow to become a form of social currency that gives fans a way to measure themselves against other fans. This is an attempt to help users become more visible.
Indeed Colts Cred inspires some of our most active users to keep busy in the community and thereby drives a lot of page views, but our motive for building the system is not completely selfish. Our research has shown that fans want to be known and recognized for their passion and dedication. Colts Cred gives them a tangible way to be recognized. We may in the future add badges, titles or other symbols which users can earn and “wear” online to showoff their cred rankings. We may award cred to fans who join sponsor groups or buy sponsor products.
Such contests will help generate buzz, but is there a way we can take a page from E bay where reputation is a critical piece of how users learn to trust eachother and do business together? While our fans won’t be doing business, they will be forming relationships. Can Colts Cred cause relationships to form faster? The more our fans are connected to eachother, the closer they’ll feel to the team and the more likely they will remain fans.
