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Incentive design: Where engagement strategies collide
How Substack focuses on experience, and Twitter focuses on engagement.
Incentives are quietly driving every decision we make. They control our actions with technology and the social algorithms that power our choices. Incentives are everywhere.
Ever wonder what platforms and products do to motivate you to take certain actions and keep you hooked? Here’s a hint, it’s the incentives.
Understanding Incentives
By definition, an incentive is, “a thing that motivates or encourages someone to do something”, but the best way to explain incentives is through an example.
On Instagram, using hashtags lets users reach a broader audience and grow their accounts. Therefore if someone wants to grow their account, they would be incentivized to use a hashtag to do so. Making using hashtags the incentive to grow their following.
In the graphic above, features designed to motivate or encourage certain actions are the arrows. Think hashtags on Instagram or Twitter. Incentive design is just designing the features that close this gap for users.
Incentives are dynamic, they should be fluid and ever-changing within products. Incentives shape user behavior, and incorporating these subtle motivators can do wonders for user retention and engagement.
Incorporating them into a product is what gets users hooked, it’s what makes the experience enjoyable. People make businesses, apps, and even can make a living off of these incentives. If you want to create a product that is used, and loved, by millions every day, incentives are the only route you can take.
Fun Facebook?
Incentives are everywhere on social media platforms. Why? Because these platforms live and die by user engagement. Facebook, like any social media giant, knew this and wanted to find a way to increase engagement, so they came up with reactions.
