What is Gamification and How Does it Apply to Blogging?

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Do you know what ‘gamifying a blog’ means? If not, you must be new to the term ‘gamification’. So, let’s first clear our concept of gamification. And then we’ll move on to the issue of applying gamification principles to a blog.

Gamification
Gamification is an emerging digital trend that you need to watch for in the year 2012. Anybody that hears this term for the first time starts to think that gamification might be equal to games, which it’s actually not. Gamification can be defined as the application of game-design mechanics to non-game experiences. And that’s exactly where it can apply to blogging as well.

Here’s how Wikipedia defines this concept –

Gamification Marketing
Gamification or game-based marketing creates a win-win situation for online marketers and entrepreneurs. The concept works fantastic, because it makes customers or consumers feel important. Location-based services like Gowalla, Foursquare and Facebook places have applied the concept of gamification wonderfully to create a higher level of engagement with the audience. And there are several other brands that are already cashing in by utilizing this growing digital trend. The best part about gamification is that it can be applied to a wide range of non-gaming products.

But gamification is a lot more than just ‘badges’.

It’s really important to understand that gamification is not limited to badges or leaderboards alone. Once you have understood the underlying concept of gamification, it’s time to focus on the business goals that you want to fulfill. In the light of the goals you want to achieve, you can find ways to apply gamification principles to your online business, campaign, website or blog with a view to driving social momentum among the target audience.

How Does it Apply to Blogging?
Yes, gamification also offers opportunities that you can use to save your blog, and make it come alive. Before you set out to gamify your blog, you should clearly define the goals that you want to achieve. You need to know what you would actually want your readers to do.

In terms of ‘blog gamification’, you may want to achieve these goals –

Create loyal blog readers
Increase commenting on your blog
Get more email/ newsletter subscribers
Promote/ sell your e-books
Attract more Facebook fans and Twitter followers

It’s only when you are clear about the goals that you can apply the principles of gamification to enhance audience engagement. One thing that you should always keep on top of your mind is what ways you can use to reward your readers for their time and effort.

You can think about rewarding those readers that leave the most number of comments on your blog. You may want to offer incentives for people who become a fan of your Facebook page or follow your blog on Twitter. And there are several ways to accomplish this.

A leaderboard for commenters is a cool way of giving some recognition to your blog’s active readers. Thought the leaderboard, you can highlight the number of comments (along with a link pointing back to their domain) left by active commenters on your blog. In addition, you can also decide to offer some premium content to those readers that show loyalty. Or you can offer some free blog tools and resources to reward readers and engage them more.

All you need to do is think a little more creatively, and you can come up with multiple ways to apply gamification principles to your blog. So, are you ready to breathe new life into your blog and fulfill your business goals?

Please feel free to share what you think about this new digital trend.