Adding Gamification to Your Community | Social Media Today [25Oct11] - 0 views
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It is interesting to see gamification now being applied in a marketing/website/community context, because many marketers and community managers have already been using these techniques to build engagement for several years.
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there are many ways to incorporate game mechanics into a community and which ones are appropriate depend a lot on the make-up of your community audience and what the ultimate goals for the community are.
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my belief is that you need to gradually introduce new elements into a community and make sure that any new features are fully explained and documented.
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According to a definition in the Gamification Wiki,"Game Mechanics are constructs of rules and feedback loops intended to produce enjoyable gameplay."
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Recency -- when was the last visit? Frequency -- how often does the member visit? Duration -- how long do members stay on the sight when they visit? Virality -- how often do members share content on the site? and how much is their sharing amplified through their network? Ratings -- how often do members rate content on the site?
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What goals are you trying to accomplish with the community? Can you measure them? Do you have any elements of gamification incorporated into your community today? Does your community platform support gamification elements? Can you track your measures in your community system?
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Do you have an open or closed community? Is your community a professional, social, support, informational, hybrid or something else community? How do you want members to use the community? How many members do you have and how many do you add in a typical week or month? What is the typical member profile? How engaged are your community members? How do you measure engagement? What motivates your members to join, participate and stay engaged in the community? Do you have robust member profiles? Are member profiles searchable? Can members 'friend' or message other members? Do you have a way for members to add their Twitter or Facebook accounts to their profiles? How easy is it for members to share content on other sites?
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I also want members to receive recognition for their achievements by earning badges that can be displayed on their profiles and announced via their social networks. As a community manager, I want to be able to create different types of badges including limited edition or special occasion badges.
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I definitely want to keep track of points, but I want to be able to customize the calculation of the points. I don't know what the ideal point values would be, but I know that I would want to experiment with rewarding members for recent visits, the frequency and duration of their visits, their sharing of content on the site or in their social networks, creating content, participating in discussions or rating content.
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Customization is also important in the leaderboards. I want to have multiple leaderboard; for example, I may want a weekly, monthly and all-time versions of the leaderboard that I will post in different parts of the community site to recognize leaders who are currently contributing the most to the community experience and to others who have been long time contributors.
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First of all, the member profile system needs to be robust with the option to upload a picture and have free form bio descriptive fields. Most importantly, I should be able to link my profile to my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles and possibly use single-sign-on use those services. The profiles should also keep a history of a user's activity, badges and points. Another requirement for the profile system is that members should be able to create virtual friendships or groups within the community site.
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Content ratings have been around for awhile, and they are an important part of increasing engagement. I would push the envelop further by making it easier for users to share their content ratings and to search for content based on the rating.
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Members must be able to easily share content they like within their social networks, via bookmarking sites and by email.
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As a phase 2 implementation, I would also want to add some custom challenges to my community to drive additional engagement. I am not sure what form these would take, but I would start thinking about how to incorporate challenges while implementing the other elements noted above.