Today, June 30th, we celebrate World Social Media Day.
We live in a world flooded with apps, and those who offer exciting features have an edge. It’s crucial to acquire, engage and retain users, and the easy answer is always gamification. According to several studies, the brain’s reward center, the nucleus accumbens, lights up when people receive likes on social media. Another study states that gamification boosts engagement by 1/3rd, which means gamification can be the answer to engaging users around the world-wide-web.
Gamification offers a huge opportunity to help people interact. It has the potential to significantly increase social media interaction and have a more favorable impact on the audience. With a social media app that gives the thrill of achievements the user is bound to experience some level of adrenaline rush while navigating on such a social media platform.
3 ways to increase engagement on social media
Gamification is one of the strategic methods that have proven to be highly effective in amplifying the marketing campaign of brands that tend to market on social media.
There are several ways to amplify engagement on social media and instigate positive impact:
Reward triggers: Rewards can be a great source of motivation and encouragement. These triggers should be aligned with the company strategy in order to connect with the audience instantly and effectively. Uber, for example, is a good example. In the beginning, they offered free rides for anyone that shared the app with their friends.
Right timing: Timing plays a crucial role in gamification on social media. Less time, according to game theory, leads to more excitement for the user since time limitations promote urgency, and urgency stimulates enthusiasm. This increases engagement. The sense of urgency in gamification can be a powerful motivator for people to take action. The urgency in the gamification can serve as a great motivator to make people doing action.
Multiplayer competitions: Competitions are an effective way to achieve the interest and engagement of the audience. The point systems stimulate the users to perform better with every attempt.
How brands amplify the social media experience
Nowadays it’s really hard to engage users online, we have so many companies/brands trying to reach their audience that it’s difficult to engage those users because people generally use social media to socialize and share content with friends and family and not engage with a brand.
However, we have some good examples of companies that engage their users on social media in a unique way of indulging people in using the app/platform even more. The first example is LinkedIn. LinkedIn’s Profile Strength bar excites people to share the nest version of themselves to get a 100% profile strength. Furthermore, LinkedIn’s SSI (Social Selling Score) encourages people to create more content to rank better when they appear in searches. 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.
Another example is Snapchat. Snapchat’s gamification feature entertains people as they socialize. Snapchat has introduced fun games in the filters to amplify a user’s social media experience.
INSIDER in collaboration with Facebook 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.
Gamification is a diverse tool that can be used as a marketing tool in order to help brands increase their audience’s engagement and establish a strong online presence. It can also be an effective tool to amplify any social media campaign.
