I wanted to open up the topic to discuss ways to encourage or incentivize users to fill in information in a user profile on a website, such as skills, location, organization, etc. More information in a user profile can give a website an improved capability for its users to search, network, and collaborate.
Without bugging users to fill in their profiles (ie - via annoying e-mail reminders), what other ways have you guys come up with to encourage user input?
I find the Stack Overflow concept of badges or some other kind of reward hook very useful for this kind of thing. You could of course limit access to features also based on information in the profile.
Make filling in this information a benefit for the users. For example, "if you fill in your location, we can filter search results based on that information."
It's all about making the user get perceived benefit from doing an action.
Exposing the benefit, in some form of feedback is a really good way to go - show your users that they have gotten something out of it.
Trophies, or some sort of social effect ("45 users have filled in their profile, will you?") are good ideas.
Linking to a privacy policy that is devoid of legalese and doesn't cause the user to navigate away from the forms to fill out their profile usually helps. Additionally, marking any field that will be public with "Viewable to everyone" in addition to marking the rest with "Private" will also help. Whenever possible, make the private fields optional.
E.g for every field, let them expand a container that explains how the data in that field will be used, in plain language.
A quick search will turn up a ton of controversy surrounding Facebook, Google and more regarding privacy. Make sure the form adequately puts out fear fires.
Additionally, limit the number of questions, make sure the tab key works as expected, etc, etc.. but that's all general usability.
I have noticed that a simple graphic image (showing percentage complete..some thing like a battery icon on the cell) next to the username ( to the user) with a hover text (your profile is x% complete - click here) works.
Another option is to show the user a "percentage completed" bar of their profile (like LinkedIn does, called "Profile Completeness"). Many people will feel the need to get that bar up to 100%.