Game-based mechanics—a collection of activities and technologies that add up to define a user experience—can heavily influence social media marketing/content marketing campaign strategy — a specialty of DigitalEYE Media.

Common interactive gameplay features of most gamified applications or services for customer loyalty programs include the awarding of “badges” for achievements, players ranked by “level,” public “leaderboards” showing who’s scoring the most points, feedback (progress bars, points toward next level, etc.) that lets players know how they’re doing, a point system or other virtual currency for purchasing upgrades or prizes, and the ability to challenge or talk trash with other users.

Incetivize Customers, Build Loyalty

The gamification movement seeks to take these kinds of common video game elements and apply them to the “real world” in an effort to incentivize customers, build loyalty and introduce some fun into what might otherwise be mundane, everyday activities (like getting coffee, shopping and exercising) when the games are played.

The game flow of the games may be either “turn-based,” in which players are given a number of turns to execute their actions. or “real-time,” in which player actions take a real amount of time to complete.

Online gaming is a technology rather than a genre, a mechanism for connecting players together rather than a particular pattern of gameplay.

All online games are played over some form of computer network (which almost always means the Internet). One advantage of online gaming is the ability to connect to multiplayer games, although single-player online games are quite common as well.

Online games can range from simple text-based games to games incorporating complex graphics and virtual worlds populated by many players simultaneously. Many online games have associated online communities, making online games a form of social activity beyond single-player games.

The rising popularity of Adobe Flash and Java led to an Internet revolution where websites could utilize streaming video, audio, and a whole new set of user interactivity.

Flash, a multimedia platform used to add animation, video and interactivity to web pages, is frequently used for advertisements and games.

The Java software platform refers to a number of software products and specifications from Sun Microsystems. Java’s suitability for games programming is based on features like direct access to graphics hardware and external devices. As a result, there exists a growing number of excellent, fun Java games on the market.

On-demand Entertainment

When Microsoft began packaging Flash as a pre-installed component of IE, the Internet began to shift from a data/information spectrum to also offering on-demand entertainment. This revolution paved the way for sites to offer web surfers online multiplayer games like the mighty World of Warcraft.

More humble online browser games are played over the Internet using a web browser like Internet Explorer, Foxfire, Google Chrome or Bing. Browser games are often free-to-play and do not require any client software to be installed apart from a web browser. Browser games are also portable and can be played on multiple different devices. They can be created and run using standard web technologies or browser plug-ins like Flash.

Browser games come in many genres and themes that appeal to both core players and casual players.

They can be single-player (e.g., Robot Unicorn Attack, Castle of Heroes, The Room) or multiplayer (e.g., Domain of Heroes, Fallen Empire: Legions, Virtonomics).

Virtonomics is a business simulation, simulating economics, that enables users to study the basics of management. The game is turn-based and the conversion of a game situation occurs once a day.  The main purpose of Virtonomics, which resembles the game Capitalism 2 designed by Trevor Chan, is to build a successful business in a tough competitive struggle.

Multiplayer browser games have an additional focus on social interaction, often on a massive scale. Due to the accessibility of browser games, they are often played in more frequent, shorter sessions compared to traditional computer games.

This makes them ideal for the short social games so appealing to both marketers and consumers alike.

For brand marketers, their ultimate functional goal remains, as always, customer engagement leading to repeat purchases of products and services.  The name of the social gaming game is more eyeballs and longer brand engagement. Gaming can be used socially to reach a vast array of customers who may have little to nothing in common outside of the gaming networks in which they choose to participate.

Fortunately, social gaming is simply a variation on quite familiar (and centuries old) customer loyalty programs—in this case just updated and pixelated to deepen brand involvement and create online buzz.

Social games are popular because they cover a range of genres, including RPGs, strategy games, virtual worlds and action. What they all share in common is that they can be played in 5-10 minutes, making them perfect for coffee breaks (or discrete loafing). Many games can also be played between and among friends and replicate the fellowship of sitting around a board game, while the quest for top scores plugs into the human competitive edge.

With 62 million U.S. Internet users (or 27 percent of total users in the U.S.) playing at least one game on a social network per month, advertisers are spending lots of money hoping to cash in on all those eyeballs. Users are obliging by increasingly spending their money to buy virtual goods like “ammunition,” “crops” and “new levels” as they get deeper into their gaming habit.

According to research from eMarketer, users are expected to spend $653 million in virtual goods in 2011, 28 percent more than last year with $248 million coming from lead generation and $192 million from advertising.  eMarketer says virtual goods will continue to lead the way in generating revenue for the industry with a 60 percent share in 2011 and 2012.

Marketers are also spending money on “lead generation” campaigns – or the exchange of a user signing up for their newsletter or special offer in exchange for free virtual goods for a favorite game – with the hopes of enticing the user to sample or test their products.

According to a Feb. 2010 survey from game publisher PopCap, men make up 45 percent of the total social players. But the person most likely spending time tending virtual farms (and maybe even whacking rival wise guys in Mafia Wars), is a 43-year-old woman who plays several times a day, even though she holds a full-time job (and most likely has kids). She’s also most likely to be playing FarmVille, Bejeweled Blitz, Texas Hold’em Poker, Cafe World, and Mafia Wars, and has likely played an average of six games — many of which were recommended by friends. Facebook is her preferred gaming destination of choice. In fact, 83 percent of those surveyed say they choose to play on Facebook over other social networks. That’s not exactly a surprise, though, given the dominance of Facebook and the fact that most social games land on Facebook first.  As for spending dollars on playing these games, over 50 percent say they’ve earned and spent virtual currency in these games (but only 28 percent have bought virtual currency using real-world money).

MSN Games reports 40 percent of their casual games customers are college graduates or higher, 25 percent are in a professional or managerial role at work, and 55 percent have a household income of $50,000 or more.

“Social gaming has a business model,” Jonathan Miller, Zynga’s head of digital media, told the Abu Dhabi Media Summit in March 2011. “People who play FarmVille actually spend real money to buy virtual food or whatever it may be for their pig.  Most people don’t but enough do so that it’s a real business.”

In an online world hyper-sensitive to advertiser intrusion, brands have experimented via social engagement and branded content with ways to make their messages not an interruption but desirable in their own right.  The challenge to brands is to capture customer attention and then make themselves a part of the rhythm of their customers’ lives, sort of scratching the itch to play games that reinforce a relationship with a brand.

The true skill lies in combining brand messaging and game player desires in a coherent way.

Gabe Zicherman, the author of the book Game-Based Marketing, notes that brands have lost the ability to tell consumers what their preference is—instead, consumers defining that preference are now relying on the opinions and calls to actions of their peers.  Social utility has allowed consumers to cooperate and compete with others in their social graph (the map and database of who is connected to whom) and their neighborhood, driving deeper engagement.

Brands can use game mechanics as a system through which they can inspire a call to action.

But, if a game-based marketing program is not properly executed, things can go horribly wrong.

“Video-gamification” of social media marketing has exploded onto the global business scene so fast that brand marketers are scrambling just to separate hype from truth and grasp the basics of this onrushing mega-trend that has turned an industry on its head.

Current media headlines are reminiscent of the ‘90s dot-com bubble.  Venture investors are placing colossal valuations on consumer Internet companies like Facebook, the Web’s largest social networking service turned largest online gaming website, and Zynga, the top social network game developer.

Social gaming is barely three years old, but Zynga and Facebook led a 51 percent surge in the private market valuations of top Web companies in this year’s first quarter, according to Nyppex, a New York-based research and advisory services firm.

Zynga, maker of the Cityville and FarmVille online games, rose 81 percent in value from the fourth quarter to about $8 billion (other sources put that valuation closer to $10 billion). Facebook climbed 57 percent to about $65 billion. Even though other sources put Facebook’s valuation somewhere in the neighborhood of $52 billion—that’s still more than 25 times revenues.  The valuations are based on transactions among institutional investors.

The Wall Street Journal reported in February 2011 that Zynga had revenue of $850 million in 2010, just its third full year, more than triple the year before.  Facebook’s revenue went as high as $2 billion in 2010, its sixth full year.

Not only is revenue exploding, but profits are, too. Through the first nine months of 2010, Facebook made $355 million, meaning it likely made a profit well over $400 million, if not $500 million, for the year. (In contrast, Google’s net income in its sixth year—2003—was $399 million.)  Zynga’s profit was also about $400 million in 2010, only its third full year.

Facebook has become the largest online gaming website on the Internet because, of the 500 million users registered with the service, nearly three-quarters of them play at least one game on a regular basis. Moreover, a majority of the applications on Facebook are games, both small and big.

According to the latest App Data report released April 4, 2011, Zynga dominates the social gaming market with more than 269 million monthly active users across its 55 apps, most of which are gaming properties. Gaming publisher Electronic Arts, with a market capitalization of $6.3 billion, is far behind with 36.4 million monthly active users across its 39 gaming apps. Self-funded CrowdStar follows with its 32.3 million monthly active users across 20 gaming properties.

All the green in the water is attracting some pretty big sharks.

For example, in March 2011, media giant News Corp announced plans to build its own social-gaming business—and it won’t be on the carcass of its social entertainment site MySpace (whose sale or spin-off the company has begun exploring).  Instead, News Corp’s social-games drive would center on Making Fun and IGN, two small companies it bought in the past few years.

It gets even more interesting when you consider that social gaming is part of a larger gamification trend in which businesses of all kinds weave elements of games into applications that otherwise have little to do with typical game playing.  Earlier this month, Bloomberg’s Business Week reported how huge companies like Siemens, SAP, Nissan and Mattel are using game technology to improve how they train workers and design and market products.

The market for all this gamification will grow to $1.6 billion in 2015, from $100 million in 2011, says Wanda Meloni, founder of M2 Research, a consulting firm that researches the gaming industry.  According to a new report from Parks Associates, revenues in the social gaming market will increase to $5 billion between now and 2015.

That’s just a small part of the $28 billion U.S. video game industry, but social gaming is moving up the charts with a bullet, while the rest of the video game industry struggles with its own monetization problems.

All of this begs the question, what does all this online video gaming foment in the social media marketing space mean to brand marketers?  Check back next week as I delve into the implications for brand marketers.

Specifically, 2011 is being predicated as the breakout year for 2D coding. Although the technology was invented in Japan in 1994, it has just recently been updated and applied to mobile phone applications, making it easier to use on both the consumer side, as well as the business side.

Microsoft Tags is leading the way in 2D barcodes that are customizable, easy to use and free. Businesses can create a Tag that links to their webpage, or other online resources, and can attach the Tags to posters, flyers, marketing materials…the list goes on and on. People can then scan the Tag directly from their phone which will instantly direct the user to the destination businesses set their Tag to go to.

While 2D coding is great for large businesses like USA Today who added a Tag to their newspaper that takes readers directly to their online version, or Allure Magazine’s annual Free Stuff Giveaway that enlisted 444,572 barcode scans, the largest barcode campaign to-date, I think 2D coding can be just as beneficial, if not more, to small businesses.

Small businesses can add Tags to their ads in local publications, flyers left at other businesses, or business cards handed out to potential contacts. With 2D coding technology, businesses are no longer at the mercy of someone remembering to pull out their card or flyer and enter their long URL, but can access information online instantly. Microsoft Tag also provides businesses with advanced analytics to measure campaign effectiveness with enhanced reporting, such as the number of scans of a particular Tag over time and by geographic location. Whether you’re a photographer with a Tag linking to your online portfolio or a restaurant with a Tag offering a discount, EVERYONE should take advantage of 2D coding.

One last piece of advice: Though it may be its breakout year, 2D coding is still widely unknown to consumers. Be sure to add a quick line of copy explaining what it is and where they can download the code reader.

It’s only February, so join the 2011 mobile marketing bandwagon with 2D coding, and look for more ways to integrate mobile marketing into your 2011 strategy in the very near future.

Using discretion on what you post on the Internet has been widely written and warned about, yet, people continue to Tweet, blog and Facebook post inappropriate content that lands them in hot water. People know by now, that you should not post things about your job, boss, fellow employees, or clients. But while there will always be people who don’t understand discretion, or will take the idea of free speech too far, there is an issue that appears hard to pin down because of its relativity: humor.

Earlier this month, American Fashion designer, Kenneth Cole, took the riots in Egypt as a shameless way to promote his new spring line:

“Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC”

Needless to say, this did not go over well. Most of Cole’s campaigns seem to titter on the edge, but this one was clearly over the line.

The problem with humor is that it’s relative. If you’ve ever told a joke to one person and got a huge laugh, but then told the same joke to another, only to receive blank stares, you know what we’re talking about. Playing with edgy humor is always risky.  Usually, it will either go over very well, or completely bomb. Here are a few things to avoid when playing with edgy humor:

-Avoid making fun or light of large disasters: As seen in the Kenneth Cole example and Groupon’s Superbowl commercials about Tibet, making light of large scale disasters, both recent, or in the past, is more likely than not, going to be viewed as insensitive and shameless.

-Avoid making jokes about race: No business, brand, or person benefits from being considered a racist, and there is no faster way to gain this title than to make race related jokes. Leave this type of humor to the stand-up comedians.

-Avoid monetizing at the expense of others: Back in September when the San Bruno explosion and fire destroyed dozens of homes, killed four people, and left many injured, a local café, Onyx Café, put out a tweet offering a place to come and cool off from the fire with a drink. Anything where people were killed or hurt is not something to joke about and will likely cause backlash and negative attention.

While humor is one of the most effective ways to promote a product, brand or business, it can also be very risky. Keep these tips in mind and you are more likely to have a success like the Old Spice campaign and less likely to experience public ridicule like Kenneth Cole.

What Is Social Media Monitoring?

Social Media monitoring is how brands, companies and advertising agencies cultivate the impact of their brand across the Social Web. Companies that sell to consumers or businesses can leverage Social Media Monitoring even if they don’t actively participate on the Social Web. A variety of tools exist that measure the effectiveness of your social media marketing campaign to what people are saying about your brand or product on Facebook, Twitter or any social site you can think of.

The Advantages Of Social Media Monitoring

Social Media monitoring affords anyone the opportunity to visualize the impact they have made on the social web and whether or not it stems from their marketing efforts or word of mouth. It gives businesses the chance to contact customers and engage with them after their purchase or address issues they’re having.

Companies such as Comcast, Dell and Gatorade all use a vast amount of Social Media monitoring tools to track their online and even offline advertising campaigns, customer feedback requests to update the social sphere of any news. The advantages of employing a great set of Social Media monitoring tools is being able to handle crises instantly, track your competition and adjust your marketing efforts to reflect data you’ve collected from the social web.

Imagine being able to view what people are saying about your brand – positive or negative – and being able to engage in the conversation. Brand perception can be formed for the positive and complaints that arise can be addressed. Crises that lead to negative to brand perception can be contained if you’re alerted to the problem early.

How To Monitor The Social Web: InfiniGraph

Monitoring the social web is key to what we do at DigitalEYE and vital to truly manage the effectiveness of your social media campaigns. A lot of tools exist to tap in to what people are saying about your brand but one sticks out for its capabilities: InfiniGraph generates real time feedback that visualizes how your brand is perceived online.

InfiniGraph is one of the most powerful social media tracking tools. Social Times has a great breakdown on what InfiniGraph is and how it works.

Email was championed as the forward-thinking communication tool of the 90′s. It spawned uninterrupted communication across all continents and brought down one of America’s largest corporations — killer indeed! Email is also a spammer’s heaven despite the legal ramifications. Spam is the scourge of the Internet. It is a one-way facet that disrupts people’s workflows. It’s the most obtrusive form of advertising, yet spammers continue to thrive on unsuspecting recipients. Filters have been created and are continually tweaked but the battle against spam is waged in offices everywhere on a daily basis.
Email is one of the biggest productivity killers and time wasters as people write out epics akin to The Illiad and The Odyssey, that could be condensed in to a sentence or two. Thankfully, there is a solution: Twitter’s Direct Messages and @replies is the email killer we’ve been waiting for; they’re fast, minimalist and won’t assault your inbox with spam.

Twitter Kills Spam With a Click

Has someone sent you a spam-filled Tweet? Block them. Don’t want to be burdened with automated messages? Unfollow them. Twitter makes communication (private or public) simple. Twitter offers the broad reach of emails with the advantages of simplicity by promoting pick-and-choose communication and focusing on whom you really need to talk to. Messaging with Twitter forces you to start a conversation and really be a part of it— spam free, of course.
Twitter Gets Straight to the Point

The best thing about Twitter is its biggest limitation: 140 character messages and updates. If email were built on the idea that a message cannot exceed 140 characters, we wouldn’t have the current epidemic of spam and seemingly endless emails that serve no purpose but to waste the recipient’s time. Twitter’s limitation makes the real purpose of a message shine, instead of it being dimmed by unneeded thoughts.

Email is Too Slow
Despite the advancements in email, it’s still slow compared to Twitter’s @replies and direct messages, which happen instantly. Email must be downloaded and have a high latency when downloaded to a phone. Twitter replies can be delivered as text messages to your phone and if you have a Twitter client on your phone, the message appears instantly.

Twitter’s @replies and direct messages are nirvana for those who thrive on simple, direct forms of communication. Its spam control methods beat email, messages are straight to the point and they’re sent fast. I predict direct messages will soon outnumber emails; Twitter is just that efficient.

Evans’ roots in Social Media Marketing stem from his experience working at GSD&M in the advertising department; his goal is to see ads go beyond their current disruptive nature and create a more intimate marketing experience. Evans co-founded Digital Voodoo in 1994 and has worked with clients such as Bengaluru International Airport, Intel, Dell, United Brands, Pepsico, Southwest Airlines, AARP, Wal-Mart and the PGA TOUR.

Evans is best known for his book “Social Media Marketing: An Hour A Day” which gives anyone with a marketing background a primer on the social web, how consumers interact with brand and how the purchasing funnel works.

His follow-up book Social Media Marketing: The Next Generation” focuses on how to use social media for consumer relationship management and how to monitor the impact of your social media marketing. All great books and DigitalEYE staff favorites.

Evans’ expertise ultimately comes from being a consumer. His motivation to change current marketing theory reflects his understanding of the consumer as person rather than as a statistic.

If you are interested in finding out about Evans’ strategies or what social media marketing can do for your brand, we encourage you to come to DigitalEYE Media’s event on December 16th which features Evans as the keynote speaker. Currently, there are fewer than 90 tickets available, and space is running out. Cost of admission is only $10 if you book before December 9th and food and beverages will be served during a networking hour with Dave before the presentation. DigitalEYE will also be raffling some impressive door prizes. For more information, visit our event website at Internet Marketing OC. If you are within driving distance, you won’t want to miss this one-time only event!

Copy Blogger

(http://www.copyblogger.com)

Copy Blogger is a great read if you are going to be doing any kind of writing online. Copy Blogger writes great articles and tutorials on how to improve your writing and make blogging, copywriting and writing for search engine optimization fun and effective.

Top 10 SEO Tips

(http://www.top10seotips.com)

Top 10 SEO Tips, maintained by Steve Wiideman, is one of the greatest online search engine
optimization resources online. I work with Steve on a regular basis and his expertise is astounding. He’s great at what he does and regularly blogs about search engine optimization.

Mashable

(http://www.mashable.com)

Mashable is one of the most active and well written social media Blogs out there. It’s constantly updated with tutorials and features a plethora of resources that will help you harness the power of social media. The blog has the latest news in social media allowing you to keep up to date with the newest startups, trends and tools.

Scobleizer

(http://scobleizer.com)

Robert Scoble is one of the most interesting personalities on the Internet. He is most notable for his book “Naked Conversations” which details his work evangelizing Microsoft through blogging. Scoble’s blog is great to read about, well, blogging.

ReadWriteWeb

(http://www.readwriteweb.com)

ReadWriteWeb is another great social media blog that tackles the legality and impact of social media campaigns. They have a small networks of blogs that focus on very specific segments of social media such as cloud computing and the mobile web.

Hopefully these blogs will help you better understand social media. This is just the tip of the iceberg though. Exploring more social networks and blog s related to your niche will help make social media fun and effective.

In today’s world, marketing is easily dismissed if it seems any bit robotic, even if a human did, in fact, create it. Content inundated with jargon is practically useless when you’re attempting to captivate consumers and drive business. Starting a blog for your company or brand gives you a very powerful medium for creating original content and giving your company a personality and voice. A company blog that offers original content gives your brand visibility, creates trust and provides a medium for customer interaction.

Creating Organic Content For Your Brand Creates Visibility

Search engines love organic content. Creating good organic content is important for any good search engine optimization strategy, when you naturally inject keywords into your text, you’re making it easy for any search engine that indexes to pick up data. Search engines recognize this and will suggest your site more and more to consumers. Original content also gives consumers something fresh about your brand to experience and will continue to develop relevancy and new web traffic.

Gives Your Brand Has A Presence Online And Builds Trust

Having a powerful online presence is valuable because you can show your knowledge and authority concerning your industry and build trust. Taking the conversation beyond what your brand is about and writing about you do in your field gives readers and consumers confidence in your product. You wouldn’t trust a mechanic to fix your car if he didn’t know a Lamborghini from a Kia, why would you trust you a salesman to sell you something if he couldn’t tell the difference between his product and that of his competitor? Giving your brand a strong internet presence creates trust with consumers bringing them back time and time again.

Creates A Medium To Interact With Consumers

Visibility and trust are vital to creating a strong web presence but you need to have interaction with your blog; it’s a conversation between your and your consumer. Blogging transcends the traditional advertising experience which ends shortly after an image is abruptly flashed in front of you. A blog is the followup between you and every client that has bought your product and everyone who is interested in what you’re selling. Consumers view your company blog as the voice of your brand, they’ll listen and they’ll actively seek it out. If you’ve got their ears, you better something interesting interesting to say.

Having a company blog is vital for creating organic content for your brand which generates excellent visibility. It gives you a method for communicating with consumers to build trust. If your company doesn’t have a blogger or company blog, DigitalEYE Media has a skilled team of writers that can bond with your brand to give it the voice and online presence it deserves.