Humans generally love competition; we always want to prove that we are the best in the field.
How is gamification valuable for community building? How can we use community data to create effective gamification strategies?
Gamification is the use of games to encourage engagement in your online community.
In gamifying, you should make it competitive while also keeping it simple. Although it's a competition, over-engineering could discourage members from participating.
What drives participation is motivation. Motivation can either be intrinsic, extrinsic, or a combination of both.
Some standard gamification techniques include:
At the 2015 Gamification world congress held in Barcelona, attendees used Lego to showcase the basics of gamification. Lego bricks were used as the reward at the same time.
Lego bricks were placed on tables for participants, and the organizers gifted each person four 2x4 bricks. They started with a construction exercise and then shared knowledge on gamification.
The game consisted of four stages. After each step, participants shared knowledge of what they learned from the exercise. The person who shared the insight got one brick by every participant from the four bricks given to each.
As a reward, the winner gave participants a small bag of lego bricks, and the participants thanked the winner for his contribution in return. What made participants effectively engaged was the fact that the they weren't aware of the prizes until the end of the game.
TIP: in creating an effective gamification strategy, strive to understand what motivates your community members. What are their goals, and what value they get from the community? Make sure that the gamification strategy reflects your brand identity. For example, Lego used their Lego bricks for the activity.
AhoyConnect immediately records details from the onboarding form filled by every member when joining a community. This information is available in the dashboard.
The community has several channels in which members are to engage. Each channel has a specific number of points awarded for engagement: for every activity a member participates in, he wins some scoring points.
The activity board is in different stages, and the number of points a member has will determine his member type.
For example, a member whose activity level is low and has acquired between 0-10 points is considered a lurker, and one with 11-50 points is active, etc.
You can customize the scoring system based on your own criteria.
The scoring system helps you easily create a member leaderboard - showcasing the most active members. Reward them once they meet the criteria.
Finally, gamification unites members and creates friendly competition.
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