How do you motivate your users/members to contribute or add value to your product?

1. Show the product team <> customer conversations to the rest of the company through reviews, interviews etc 2. Celebrate wins from team point of view - how the product is influencing in customer's life and why the team matters (do this frequently)

offer them something in return. how will contributing to your product enable them? What will they gain? status, social approval, money, future possibilities?

By keeping them in the loop and celebrating in an open setting! We're actually building an open community to just right that. Our users can share feature feedback or suggestions which are directly discussed in a chat instead of messy discussion forums or email. This keeps users engaged and excited about product improvements as well :).