As discussed in our social media trends & predictions for 2019, gamification is likely to take off this year!
Facebook particularly, has been investing in gamification features. In fact, earlier this year, they created ‘gamification for live video‘ where content creators would be able to add polls & questions to videos.
In this blog, we’ll be covering the basics of gamification on social media: What it is, why bother and how to use it.
What is gamification?
Why use gamification on social media?
How can we use gamification on social media?
Gamification Examples
What is gamification?
Gamification is the practice of adding game-like elements such as point scoring, competition and rules to reward behaviour in a non-game setting. Think getting points every time you brush your teeth. Or an award for doing the laundry. It isn’t a new concept- it is often used in education to make learning fun and rewarding.
Why use gamification on social media?
One advantage of including gamification in your social media strategy is that it adds some fun to your page. As a result of your audience having fun, engagement is likely to increase significantly.
According to a study from m2research, engagement can increase by as much as 100-150%!
How can we use gamification on social media?
As you will see in the examples below, gamification can be as simple or as complex as you like.
Potential ideas:
- Live video game show on Facebook
- Twitter polls
- Rewarding users for reviewing, liking, commenting on or contributing content
- Creating a competition involving user-generated content
- Posting trivia questions on social media
- Creating a social media treasure hunt
Gamification Examples
Waze
Waze gives individuals points for reporting accidents and traffic status. Whilst this sounds simple, providing points and a scoreboard gives people an incentive to engage with the app. Top scorers are giving a place on a scoreboard for everyone using the app to see. Furthermore, you can unlock different Waze ranks which adds to the competitive element.
LinkedIn has gamified the element of creating your profile through their progress bar. When you’re on your profile, you can see your ‘profile strength’ which drives users to take the steps towards 100% completion. Another element of gamification on LinkedIn is their SSI score (social selling score). This measures you on your personal brand, network, engagement and building relationships. Many companies compete on who can get the highest SSI score!
The super clever thing about their SSI score is that the only way to improve it is through using LinkedIn a lot, hence keeping people using the platform for longer!
M&M
M&M used gamification on social media in a really simple way. They posted a ‘Wheres Wally’ style picture on their social media profiles and asked users to find it. Just one post resulted in over 25,000 likes, 10,000 comments and 6,000 shares!
INSIDER
A more recent use of social media gamification is from INSIDER in collaboration with Facebook. As mentioned previously, Facebook has been developing their gamification features so that some brands can now host live video with polls, questions etc.
Insider created a game show called ‘Confetti’. This was a daily quiz show asking pop culture questions. Users then answer as many questions as possible correctly to be in with the chance of winning a cash prize.
