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Invitation

The entire Content 2.0 process hinges on your invitation.

Write an inviting invitation and you'll improve the chances that people will contribute to your site. Write a ho-hum invitation that people just can't connect with, and you'll wonder why no one wants to contribute.

What makes an invitation "inviting"? Knowing, and writing to, your visitors' motivations.

Motivations

What motivates your visitors? Is it to help others? To share a secret? To show off knowledge about the page's topic? Or is it passion that's driving them to contribute ("I just have to share this with someone!")?

This is like the research you do before writing one of your content pages. Don't rush this preparation.

Visualize yourself as one of your visitors. What motivates you, as a visitor, to contribute? If you're still not sure of the motivations after this exercise, ask a friend or two to read the content page and tell you why they would want to contribute something to it.

Once you know what motivates them to contribute, you'll know what to write to truly invite your visitors and "get the content."

Name Your Invitation

The name you give your invitation will be used in the Content 2.0 Library.

It will also appear in a text link at the bottom of every published submission page for this invitation, and on the comments page or section for each submission.

Note: This is different from the names you give to Form Build It! forms. Those names are for your internal use only. Content 2.0 invitation names are public.

Give your invitation a descriptive name that makes sense in a text link. Also, try to use the page's Specific Keyword, if it reads well. For example, the owner of anguilla-beaches.com named her invitation about cheap Anguilla hotels "Cheap Anguilla Hotel Reviews."

When it appears in the text link, the default text (which she can edit) reads as...

Join in and write your own page! It's easy to do. How?
Simply click here to return to Cheap Anguilla Hotel Reviews.

She also could have named it "Review a Cheap Anguilla Hotel," since that would also make sense as part of a link...

Join in and write your own page! It's easy to do. How?
Simply click here to return to Review a Cheap Anguilla Hotel.

Build the Lead-In to Your Invitation

The headline and the text of the invitation are the most important part of the invitation process.

A well crafted headline, and text that kindles your visitor's interest, will make an effective invitation.

Entice her by speaking to her motivations for contributing to your page.

Steps to Build the Lead-in

1. Create an invitation headline that both grabs your visitor's attention and draws upon her motivation for contributing to your site. For example, the owner of anguilla-beaches.com might decide on "Have a Great Tip About a Cheap Anguilla Hotel?"

   Analyze It! will analyze this content page just as it does any other page you build. Therefore, include your page's Specific Keyword at least once in the invitation. This could be in the headline or invitation copy, or in the form.

2. Choose a headline size and alignment. Use size 2 for the invitation headline.

3. Customize the text of your invitation. The owner of anguilla-beaches.com might begin with "Found a diamond in the sand?" which gives her visitor the sense that what she has to say is important.

   The site owner then might add "Share your story, tip or review about the cheap Anguilla hotel that you love!" This indicates that she wants her visitor to share some of herself with other visitors to the page.

   If the submission guidelines don't quite fit the needs of your invitation (e.g., commercial submissions to a C2-based directory), this is also the place to tell them what your additional submission guidelines are.

Tips

• Tie your invitation tightly to the content of your page. For example, a page about cheap Anguilla hotels should not have an invitation asking for restaurant reviews, or one about high-end, posh Anguilla hotels.

• Making the headline a question immediately begins the participation process. Your visitor has to answer Yes or No. If she answers Yes, she has just PREsold herself on contributing to your page.

  Even better is an open-ended question, such as "What's Your Favorite Cheap Anguilla Hotel?" (it's open-ended because she can't just answer Yes or No).

  This type of question gets her thinking about her experiences, which again starts the PREselling process. Everyone likes to think that her opinions matter. This is a chance for your visitor to voice her opinion, and have it published.

• Don't write about yourself. Write about your visitors, and the visitors (friends and family) that they'll bring to your site.

• Think of an invitation as having two parts: the headline and motivating call-to-action text, and the form where your visitor enters and submits her contribution.

  The headline and the text are not part of the invitation form itself. They appear before the form, as part of the content of the page displaying the invitation.

• If you want only one image submitted with a contribution, tell your visitors here in the lead-in.

  If you ask for more than one image, and visitors submit more than one, each appears as a thumbnail image in the submission. Each thumbnail is clickable, to show it as a larger image. Be sure to tell them that in your lead-in.

Build Your Invitation Form and Instructions

This is where your visitor is going to enter her submission. The clearer you make your instructions, the easier it will be for her to type it, add an optional photo (up to 4), and submit.

Imagine yourself as a visitor to your invitation page. What information do you need to successfully enter and send your contribution? That is also what your real visitor needs.

She wants to contribute to your site, but she's not going to spend a lot of time trying to decipher your instructions. Make them as clear as possible without talking down to her.

If you prefer, instead of creating brand new instructions, customize the default text provided for each text field and help box. Add page-related words to create unique instructions that meet your visitor's needs.

Steps to Build the Invitation Form and Instructions

Now that you've completed the lead-in, you're ready to build the form and write instructions for your invitation.

1. Customize the text to tell your visitor to enter the title of the submission. The owner of anguilla-beaches.com could use "Enter the Title of Your Tip."

   If she wants to be more specific, she could use "Enter the Title of Your Cheap Anguilla Hotel Tip." If she wants to broaden the scope of the submissions she receives, she could use "Enter the Title of Your Review, Story or Tip."

   Also add an example, to make it easier for your visitor to visualize a good headline (e.g., "For example, 'Review of Anguilla Great House'").

2. Next, decide whether you want to hide the form and show only the text box for the title of the submission...

   Selecting Yes allows you to hide the submission form itself.

   All that appears is your invitation lead-in text, the text box for your visitor to add a submission title, the show/hide link text, and a list of links to other submissions (in the screenshot below, this section is called "Your Favorite Cheap Anguilla Hotels").

   Why would you want to do that? The form isn't necessary until your visitor decides to contribute to your site.

   Showing her all the other submissions you've received is a PREselling feature. She'll be more likely to contribute after reading some of the others.

   Hiding the form ensures that she sees those other submissions without having to do a lot of scrolling down the page.

3. Next, customize the text to tell your visitor to enter the content of the submission. It should tell her what you expect from her (a story, review, tip, etc.). For anguilla-beaches.com, it might be "Share Your Review or Tip." Or it could be the default "Tell Your Story."

4. Then customize the text for the help box that your visitor can pop open for help. If customizing the default text, ensure that you mention all the important details that will simplify your visitor's task, making for a great user experience.

5. Do you want to allow visitors to upload pictures or graphics? Click on Yes to allow them, or No if you don't want pictures or graphics. If you select Yes...

   Customize the text to tell your visitor to upload 1-4 pictures (.jpg) or graphics (.gif). The owner of anguilla-beaches.com uses "Upload Your Anguilla Hotel Photos," preferring it to the existing default text ("Upload 1-4 Pictures or Graphics").

   Then customize the text for the image upload help box that your visitor can pop open. The default text may be sufficient, but you might decide to use it as the base for your upload-related instructions.

   The owner of anguilla-beaches.com might say, "Do you have pictures of your favorite cheap Anguilla hotel? You can include up to 4 photos. Inside, outside, by the pool, upload whatever you like..."

   Important Note

   The maximum image size accepted is 800x600. You may want to mention in your upload instructions that they will need to resize any photo larger than 800x600 pixels using their graphics software or a Web-based resizer.

6. As the last step, enter the name that you want the Submit button to have. Instead of a plain "Submit" button, the owner of anguilla-beaches.com creates a "Share Your Cheap Anguilla Hotel Review With the World" button.

Tips

• Wherever possible, customize the form copy to make it relate to your page and the text of the invitation itself.

• There are dozens of words with meanings similar to "tell." Thesaurus.com has a list of them to help you find one or more that fit your content and your voice.

• Your instructions appear as left-aligned headlines in the form, so keep them short and precise, but not terse. Help text for your visitors appears on a yellow background in a pop-open message, similar to a yellow sticky.

• Keep your instructions and help as short as you can without sacrificing their clarity and effectiveness. The longer the help, the less likely that your visitor will offer a contribution.

• You'll see the following in the Help Box for Text Entry section...

  [my story]

  This code forces the help to show [my story], which is how your visitors can add bold to their submissions.

  Preview the invitation and then click on the first blue question mark in the form to see how it appears on a web page. If you customize the help, leave this part as is so that your visitors know how to make certain text bold.

Build the "What Other Visitors Have Said" Section

This section is your opportunity to entice visitors to read submissions from other people.

The title provided by a contributor becomes the link to the submission.

To the right of the link is the current rating for that submission (default "Not Yet Rated," or one to five stars) provided by others who have read it.

(Note that the ratings only appear if you set them to appear for the submissions belonging to this invitation.)

The next three lines contain the first 150 characters of the submission.

And if you set the invitation to display thumbnail images, the first image on the page will be converted to a thumbnail and will appear to the left of the title and description.

Steps to Build the "What Other Visitors Have Said" Section

To ensure that visitors to the page read the other submissions, customize the headline to entice them.

For example, the owner of anguilla-beaches.com decides to customize the headline and the text to further entice them to read the existing contributions.

1. She creates this headline for her Cheap Anguilla Hotels page...

   Read Other Cheap Anguilla Hotel Reviews

2. She also writes this enticement...

   "Click on the links below to see some great reviews about cheap Anguilla hotels. They were all written by other visitors to this page."

Tips

• You may want to add a link above the invitation form, which lets them skip over the form directly to the existing submissions, once you have some. Use this tag to do that (editing the clickable text to suit your page)...

  <a href="#VisitorPages">clickable text that directs them to the links</a>

  In BlockBuilder, use a Raw HTML Block to add the code to the content page that will hold the invitation.

Editing Your Invitation

You can edit your invitation at any time, including after you've added it to a page.

After editing and rebuilding the invitation, you then have to rebuild the page that contains it, or re-upload an HTML editor-built page using Quick Upload It!.

Unless you do so, the new, edited version of the invitation will not appear on the page.

Adding Your Invitation to a Page

Once you've built your invitation (and the Thank You page, AutoConfirm E-mail, and Notification email), it's time to add your invitation to one of your pages.

If you build with blocks, you do that by selecting the C2 Invitation Block (you will not see it in the blocks list until after you've built your first invitation) and selecting the invitation you want to add to the page.

If you upload your pages, go to Upload Your Own HTML, to the Content 2.0 Invitations line of the Built-in Features section. Click on the Select Invitation... menu and choose the invitation you want on your page. Copy the code, paste it into the HTML file, save and upload the file.

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