In previous posts I offered some suggestion for streamlining the sign-up process. But often an easier sign-up means skimpier profiles, at least at first.

So how do you encourage new members to build out their profiles?

Well, when we meet someone new, we tend to ask questions as a way of finding out more about them. Profiles are really just answers to questions. So a great way to help members create full, rich profiles is to ask them questions about themselves, or about whatever the focus is of the site: What’s you favorite wine? What was the first item in your collection?

Don’t shy away from making the question a bit provoking: Strong opinions generate interaction.

The answers to these question can becoming a growing part of the member’s profile.  The questions could be the same five questions all members get asked the first week they join, or you could pose a new question for all members each week, and post the responses. You can even let other members give a thumbs up (or down) for originality.

These questions can bring members back to the site if you send them out by e-mail, or you can ask a new one every time they log in. You could even let members ask each other specific questions with a single click for a low-friction way of starting interaction.

If you display the best answers on the home page it can tap into the sense of community and pride and encourage participation as people aim to get their clever answers featured.

The social site Consumating (since shut down) did a great job of encouraging engagement by asking questions like these, and posting everyone’s responses so other members could give the answers a thumbs up or a thumbs down vote.

More recently, Plinky has a similar model for “content encouragement.” They pose a question every day, that people can use as a starting point for a blog post.

After all, questions are the foundation of Facebook (“What’s on your mind?”) and Twitter (“What’s happening“).

That’s a smart strategy any social network can use to encourage full, revealing profiles or even fresh blogs, status reports, and more.

Once you get people to visit your site, you obviously want them to join. So it’s crucial that you make the sign-up process as simple as possible.

Even if you want your members’ profiles to include their eye colour, favorite bird, and their zip code, you don’t always have to gather the full information on the sign-up page.

You only need to get them to take that first step to join the site–usually choosing a username, a password, and typing in their e-mail address.

But what if you could make it even easier than that?

My favorite example of a clean and lean sign-up process is posterous,which has gotten rid of the sign-up requirement altogether!
You just send an e-mail with an attachment to the site, and they automatically create a page for you, with the attachment posted, and send you a simple e-mail with the link to your new blog, and an invitation to create a password.

At this point, my content is already posted to their site: I’m committed, so following through is now more natural and less of a hurdle.

Another great example is Tripit.com. All you have to do is forward the confirmation email your airline sends you when you book a flight to Tripit at plans@tripit.com and they automatically set up your own itinerary page that you can add to.

No sign up, no choosing a username. Just forward an e-mail. Of course, later on you can build out your profile, because by them you are already committed to a certain degree.

So think about your site’s sign-up process…

Are you asking for too much information? How can you speed up the process and get more members? How can you engage them in your community without a formal sign-up process? What can you learn and adapt from the posterous or Tripit models?

A great article in the NY Times explains how dating site OKCupid uses data gleamed from their site about how their members interact to fuel their new blog. Those blog posts, in turn, generate tons of publicity and traffic to the site:

“A [single] post last month that set out to debunk conventional wisdom about profile pictures brought more than 750,000 visitors to the site and garnered 10,000 new member sign-ups, according to the company.”

That’s a load of visits, and–at 1.3%–a decent conversion rate as well…

What would you do for 10,000 new members for your social network?

The rate at which an interesting and revealing blog post can go viral, thanks to other blogs and social, media is astounding. The impact can be more important than getting traditional media coverage.

These aren’t bland blog posts about some new feature, your latest redesign, or your new VP of marketing–leave those to the corporate world.

These are snapshots of how real people are interacting.

The founders at OKCupid happen to all be Harvard mathematicians, so crunching the numbers to understand how, say, your photo affects the number of responses your profile will get, make sense. And, it’s the kind of inside information that users (and potential users) find helpful, and the rest of use find fascinating.

Of course, getting the most out of profile photos makes sense in the context of a dating site. What about social networks? What topics get the most responses? What’s the relationship between members with the most friends and how they interact with the site?

Look for these patterns and try to understand what they say about how the network interacts.

(HINT: As the community leader, you need to be aware of these things as well, to reward valuable behaviour and encourage more interaction)

And remember that lists not only are a great way for your members to engage with each other, but the results can also make great fodder blog postings.

So, what are your members loving? What are they hating? What myths are they disproving?