The team behind the Scoop.it curation platform have blogged about their methods. This link may be useful-

http://blog.scoop.it/author/ally/

Hi Deborah

Thank you for the feedback and the wonderful link. Very interesting reading.

The Hub Spot is really good as well.  I have used many of these ideas for Urgent Matters. 

http://blog.hubspot.com/

http://smhs.gwu.edu/urgentmatters/

What do you mean by a "critical mass?" Do you mean as a marketing tool? As an informational or persuasive tool, social media has proven to be fairly useless. Social media are primarily used as one-way, sender to receiver, tools. While they are capable of much more, when we view our goal as getting more members or "reaching a critical mass," we have lost sight of what a professional communicator can and should do. 

Hi Michael 

Thanks so much for responding. By critical mass I mean having sufficient number of people on the social media site to make the site useful and valuable to users. The context I am looking at is government provided social media for farmers. Preliminary findings of similar sites developed for farmers shows that they like to share information. However, I will be doing some research soon to find out what farmer groups want from sharing, who do they want to share with, what to share and why. But, I need to know if there are other theories available about how to get sufficient numbers of people involved to make the site valuable.

Hi.

If I did understand you correctly then you will find a lot of literature (especially about the topic of knowledge management) here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_practice

I know, it may look like a little bit of lazy but all relevant literature is stated there.

One further aspect: Adoption of social networks (SN) has to do with the usefulness, usability and the technical adoption of your target group. A SN for farmers might have its own difficulties to reach a critical mass. Especially nowadays, where we move more and more to mobile use of internet services. Sharing useful articles/links/data might be easier then writing long experience reports, with respect to the critical mass.

Hope it helps.

Hoda,

Based on what you describe, you might also look at Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations. He actually studied how to get farmers interested in new farming practices (pre internet, but still relevant):

Diffusion of Innovations (Rogers) Diffusion of innovations refers to the “process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels, over time, among the members of a social system” (1995, p. 5). Rogers has modified the diffusion theory over the years. In his early work, Rogers viewed diffusion as a linear process. However, later research found that diffusion is more of a convergence in communication. People “personalize” innovations and use them in different ways than originally planned by the innovation’s creators. This creates all sorts of unanticipated consequences, both positive and negative, for the innovation. And, perhaps more importantly, diffusion decisions are not as simple as to “accept” or “reject” an innovation. Rather, in diffusion theory the rate of adoption follows an Sshaped curve. Diffusion of any change initially occurs slowly and then at some point, the diffusion begins to accelerate. “Innovations that are perceived by individuals as possessing greater relative advantage, compatibility, and the like, have a more rapid rate of adoption” (1995, p. 23). Thus, over time, if an innovation is considered by members of a social system to be useful, it will be adopted. There are five attributes of an innovation as predictors of whether or not a group will accept it: (1) “Relative Advantage,” people view an innovation as meeting a cost benefit criteria. The benefit brought by an innovation must be greater than the resources used to secure that innovation. (2) “Compatibility,” the more an innovation works with existing beliefs and structures, the more likely it will be adopted. (3) “Complexity,” innovations that are easy to master will diffuse faster. (4) “Trialability,” people like to be able to try something with little risk. People prefer to embrace innovations that can be discarded immediately if the adopters are not satisfied with the outcome. And (5), “Observability,” or actually seeing an innovation in action encourages people to adopt the innovation.

hi Hoda, if you want to increase a mass then you must create page and share to your friends and also help to bookmarking and  use forum.

i have did in my website and publish paper regarding social media effect to increase ranking SERP.

http://www.ijsrd.com/Article.php?manuscript=IJSRDV2I2403

the "critcial mass" is a very important discussion - we examine exactly this issue a couple of years ago, because we simply fail on it ->

http://tccl.rit.albany.edu/knilt/images/c/c5/Fulltext.pdf

HI all

This discussion is wonderful. Thank you so much. I have some new ideas to go on.

Someone else mentioned Hub Spot, which is one of my favorite sites to get information and tips on inbound marketing, of which social media is a part. Another excellent site is the blog written by the folks at Digital Relevance. They also have free webinars that offer tips you can put to immediate use.

As far as my own experience goes, I would say that the best way to build critical mass is -- engagement. It's great to generate your own content, but if you want to build followers and get good discussions going, the best tactic is to comment on what other people post, taking care to add value and not just repeat what's already been said.

http://relevance.com/

Thanks Bonnie

Good to hear you say this. I guess this is where I am heading. The problem is that with government sites, the funding is not there for engagement.  So somehow, I need to find out the motivators of these farmers and develop inbuilt value creation attributes. I think this study provides a great opportunity for some action research. The ideas I have received so far are really good. I think I need to follow up on these leads and perhaps integrate them all into the research

In addition to diffusion of innovation, communities of practice and the social media blogs you may also consider theories from the field of cognitive psychology as they influence individual perceptions in a "buying situation".  This would include evaluative criteria buyers use to compare alternatives, the selective processes used in assessing information (i.e. selective exposure, attention, perception and retention) and risk reduction strategies especially the reputation of the seller. See U.G. Neisser "Cognitive Psychology" Appleton, N.Y. (1966). J.N. Sheth "A Model of Industrial Buyer Behavior" Journal of Marketing (Oct. 1973) and "Organizational Buyer Behavior : Past Performance and Future Expectations"  Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing (1996) and C.P. Puto et al "Risk Handling Strategies in Industrial Vendor Selection Decisions" Journal of Marketing (1985) 

Hi Hoda,

Check this out, i think they are quite useful for you.

http://www.slideshare.net/sandyadam/4-essential-steps-to-hit-critical-mass-bk-with-authors

http://www.marketplatforms.com/wp-content/uploads/Downloads/Failure-to-Launch-Critical-Mass-in-Platform-Businesses.pdf

http://www.isaca.org/chapters3/Atlanta/AboutOurChapter/Documents/Insights%20on%20IT%20risk_Social%20media_AU1168.pdf

Best wishes

yuz