FreshNetworks Blog

A number of speakers at the Marketing 2.0 conference (including myself) made analogies (explicitly or implicitly) to games or gaming when talking about their social media strategies. I think that this is a good analogy and very relevant to understanding what we do when we are building and managing online communities at FreshNetworks, and how to motivate people to take part in them.

Most social media strategies, and indeed most online communities that we build, hope to increase a consumer’s engagement with (and exposure to) the brand. This can often mean trying to increase the amount of time spend on site, or increasing the frequency and recency of visit. We see all three of these increase in our online communities (often quite substantially) when compared with other territories that the brand controls online. But to achieve this we need to offer the consumer something compelling, and to some extent enter into a game with them.

This may be in a very traditional sense, and some of the best online support communities that I know of are powered using a similar techniques to those you find in games. Rewarding those who give valuable answers to lots of questions with access to special parts of the site, new challenges to take part in and special avatars so that others can see their position. But in most other online communities this very overt application of gaming techniques would not be as successful. However, there is still much we can learn.

We want to engage people, increase the amount of time they spend with us and the benefits they receive. They want to be entertained, to share their thoughts, to learn and to be heard. To satisfy both sides we can take an influence from games and gaming:

• Provide people with new activities to do – Games are based on levels, when you complete one set of activities another opens up, keeping people involved and engaged. The same should be true in an online community. When somebody completes a task we should be providing them with something else to do. If they have uploaded a photo we should be showing them a forum discussion to tell us more, or a set of photos they might be interested in commenting on. We can show them something they might want to do and a new challenge to take part in.

• Reveal the community slowly – In a game, as people progress through levels the features available to them increase. In an online community, this approach is also successful; we don’t want people to see all that the community has to offer at once. They may be overwhelmed by the variety of things to do and it can be easier to release content and features more slowly to new members. But it is also good for members to feel a sense of discovery, to find new features the longer they spend on the site and to feel to some extent rewarded each time they come back.

• Allow people to play at their own level – Some of the best games are so successful because people can play at their own level. If they are expert gamers or just amateurs, they can enjoy and feel rewarded by spending time with the game. The same is true in an online community. Some people are never going to start a new conversation or propose a new idea. But they may want to vote for a video they like or answer a poll. Allow people to engage with the brand on whatever level is appropriate to them and allow them to benefit from this engagement, at whatever level it is.

• Make it fun – Games are fun and online communities should be too. They should be diverting and provide stimulation and excitement for those participating. When you’re building and managing you online community always ask yourself: how are we making this a fun place to be?

Read all of our posts based on the Marketing 2.0 Conference here.

Some more reading

• Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communities (beth.typepad.com)
• Social media and B2B marketing (nevillehobson.com)