Gamify your social media.
As my last blog might have given away, I love a bit of gaming. Pulling me away from the Nintendo when I was a kid was a chore, it was always “just one more level” or “I haven’t reached a save point!”. Not much has changed since then really, I’ll still jump at the chance to spend a night in gaming with my friends and I honestly can’t see that changing any time soon. What’s nice though is knowing that I’m not in the minority when it comes to a life of gaming…
Do you know who else loves playing games? You do. That’s right, you reading this article. I can almost see some of you already, shaking your heads after reading that, some of you might even go as far as to say you’ve never even played games but bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this (I promise!).
Let’s take Twitter as an example. Twitter actually shares many similarities with a video game that might not seem particularly obvious at first glance, so let me break it down:
On Twitter you create a profile for either yourself or your business and base the resulting character on your personality. Once you’ve created your character it’s out into the digital world where you can interact with other players and begin your quest. In this case, your quest is creating quality content for others to consume and the better you do on your quest the higher your score. Your score is determined by your fellow players in the form of likes, retweets, engagement levels and new followers.
Seeing that notification icon flash with new activity is the same as a gamer seeing their character level up, it shows that your making progress in the game and that you’re heading in the right direction. It’s these notifications that drive us to engage and it works phenomenally well.
I’m going to be honest with you, I didn’t come up with that analogy all on my own. I got it in part from Charlie Brooker who describes Twitter as a “MMORPG” which stands for “Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game” and I couldn’t agree with him more. Social media, in my opinion, is one of the biggest and most accessible games that we all play today and treating it as such can help you get a better result.
So, we’ve established that social media is a game, but what type of game is it? Well, that all comes down to who your audience is and understanding what they want. Do you adopt the competitive angle allowing people to win something or give them bragging rights? Or maybe you’re looking at the cooperative side, providing people opportunities to share and help each other? Deciding which angle to take will come down to you and your analysis of your audience, knowing who you’re talking to and understanding what you want them to do.
A great real world example of this is the piano staircase. For those of you unfamiliar, check out the video below:
It’s a very simple concept, the idea was to get more people using the stairs. Having an escalator that’s so easy to use, how would they get more people on the stairs? Simple. Make the stairs fun!
Getting the reaction you want from your audience is easy when you understand these 3 things. Who are your audience, what do you want them to do and, most importantly, how do you make that fun.
So what is it you want your audience to do? Is your focus on gaining more leads? Or maybe you’re looking to increase your brand awareness via shares? Whatever your desired end-result, giving your followers a reason to become involved and helping them have a good time while they do it will do your campaign wonders!
If you’d like to know more about social media or just digital marketing in general, give us at Estate Apps a call! We’d be more than happy to help.
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