New social media marketing channels pops up everyday, and a somewhat new buzzword and trend you might have heard about, “gamification”, is gaining in popularity. Gamification has introduced us to integrating game mechanics to drive desired behaviors. Why use game mechanics?
Gaming is productive. It produces positive emotion, stronger social relationships, a sense of accomplishment, and for players who are part of a game community: a chance to build a sense of purpose – Jane McGonigal
In plain English: The main goal with gamification is to integrate game mechanics into your digital marketing strategy to encourage users/visitors to stay on a brand website/blog for longer, and to interact frequently on it. Even more simpler, gamification engages people by providing “rewards” that can lead to increased profits, and brand loyalty.
Gamification with social media marketing
Gamification can be very effective when it is integrated with social media marketing because it fits in well with today’s digital marketing landscape. Users are constantly bombarded with all the information and marketing messages from various sources online. This information is then shared on social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook adding to all the noise online.
Instead of constantly throwing brand related information and marketing messages to users in the hopes that they will respond, gamification allows consumers to be players of the game. To give you an example, if your community is active on your blog and they comment on your blog posts, forward and share the content with their friends, or check in to specific locations, they can earn virtual rewards such as points and badges. The person with the most points or badges, can get discount to specific products or services that you offer. This can create competition among the users which can add loyalty to your strategy.
New social media trends
With any new trend there will always be people voicing negative comments about it. Gamification allows companies and the people in charge of the strategy to track the online activity of the people who sign up to the program and they can gather more metrics about all the active users.
I believe gamification is an excellent opportunity that you can integrate on your social media marketing campaign to get people to engage with your brand, and help you spread your marketing message in a fun way.
Dear Anton,
I love your idea about creating competition among users by offering them reward points and badges. You can indeed get quite a few shares in no time with this kind of a strategy.
Thanks @sanded28:disqus
Gamification adds a new level to any marketing strategy to make it more fun for everyone, and at the same time building brand loyalty.
There is nothing new about gaming. People have used it for years.What is new is integrating it into social media strategies. It is a great idea and will bring rich rewards.
Yep, but “Gamification” is.