6 Ways B2B Companies Can Use Social Media Gamification

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6 Ways B2B Companies Can Use Social Media Gamification Posted: 01 May 2012 04:26 AM PDT A recent article on Marketing Sherpa discussed the idea of bringing gaming mechanics, or gamification, to the internal and external operations of B2B companies. One of several definitions in the article is using game-style systems of “goal setting, real-time feedback, transparency, competition, teams, etcetera — to motivate and engage customers and employees.” While not expressly tied to social media efforts, game-like rewards can be more successful when users have the ability to share them using social media, thereby amplifying the effect of the rewards. Below are six tactics B2B marketers can use to drive internal and external engagement. 1. Drive online community engagement When customers, prospects and readers come to your site, you want them to engage with your content. One of the best ways to get them to engage is to reward them publicly for leaving comments, sharing and interacting on your site. Some comment systems have built-in point systems or even badges to make this easy. 2. Determine the reward It’s important to understand what rewards will motivate your employees or prospects to take action. Online rewards could be simple recognition of the action taken, but traditional off-line rewards work too, like trips to Hawaii. 3. Motivate employees Most employees want to do a good job, but if you introduce a little competition into the environment you can further motivate your employees. If you want to make sure a department completes a training program, offer up recognition for the employees who complete it first. You can also tie your reward efforts to company objectives and KPIs. 4. Create website engagement When prospects come to your website, you need to get them to follow a path of action that moves them closer to a sale. It is one thing to have the path clearly defined, but it is another to make a game out of it. You can connect with them on a level beyond providing solutions to their business problems. 5. Get Sales to interact with the CRM Sales organizations are used to meeting goals and comparing their results to others on the team. If one of the goals is to improve the participation in keeping the sales CRM up-to-date, look at ways to make this part of regular process. Gamification changes how you manage that and what behaviors you incent for your teams. In many instances, team goals, in addition to individuals ones, can drive greater results and more collaboration. 6. Avoid over-gaming Making everything a game can get tiresome. Give people a break where some things just happen and don’t require a competition. Have you used any of the principles of gamification in your B2B company? Photo credit: Flickr

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