Posts Tagged ‘digital’
Game Time: How to Incorporate Play into Custom Content Marketing
A less obvious and familiar strategy was addressed at the Custom Media Day in New York this week and has now been added to the Content Marketing World conference for this year. It is called gamification and can be defined as the use of game play mechanics (also known as ‘funware’) for non-game applications. Its aim is to encourage users to engage in desired behaviours.
Bunchball, a gamification platform, has identified that there are 120 million people enrolled in travel rewards programs (an example of gamification) and over 200 million people play online games that are reward based.
One example of a gamification component that is less obvious is the progression bar on LinkedIn. This social networking platform encourages its users to go through various stages to achieve 100% profile completeness. The natural desire to achieve 100% pushes users to go through each step, including suggesting friends to the network.
Foursquare is another excellent example of gamification – it awards badges for various milestones and has become an incredibly popular network.
Gamification is an excellent way to encourage users to sign up, suggest friends, engage in social media and share information. It taps into a very basic human desire and incorporates entertainment and fun into content.
Using Google+ for Custom Content Marketing
We’re sure you’ve noticed a few friends on Facebook and twitter ironically declaring their love for the new social network Google+. You may even be on the bandwagon yourself, after receiving an invitation from a friend or elsewhere.
This new social network is still very much undiscovered terrain but companies like Ford and Mashable have jumped on board early and made use of the network. Although Google+ is currently discouraging the use of personal profiles as company pages, they have announced that brand pages will be coming soon.
The impact of this new network is very much yet to be seen and it remains unknown whether it is worth investing time and effort into it for custom content marketing. If, however, it turns out that Google+ has the impact it believes it will, there will be one particular advantage to it in terms of customer content – collaboration.
As far as team collaboration and integration goes, Google+ offers some amazing and free ways for content marketers to collaborate, including:
Google+ Circles - Capture updates and information of a group of collaborators of any size and in any location
Google+ Huddles – Real time chat rooms
Google+ Hangouts – Meet as a group
Google+ Sparks – Keeps you in the know on topics and allows you to share information with team
Google+ Plugin – Plugs into your browser, giving real-time visibility to team communication
Google Search Home Page – Navigation menu with one-click access to almost all the other products on google
Like any new venture, only time will tell just how useful Google+ is, but its invention alone proves how important custom content really is.
Print vs Digital
Jann Wenner – the man that launched Rolling Stone magazine in 1967 and still publishes it to this day with a global circulation of 1.4 million – made some interesting comments to Ad Age recently, regarding the future of print magazines and his th
oughts on “tablet editions”.
Wenner, a strong advocate of the value of print publishing, who has championed the “power of print“, believes the rush to migrate magazines to tablets is “premature”, stating that publishers are showing little faith in their real asset – “the magazine itself, which is still a great commodity”. He believes, for now, digital magazines are “a small additive; it’s not the new business”.
In fact, he believes the digital future that publishers dream of may be years – “possibly decades” – away. “You’re talking about a generation at least, maybe two generations, before the shift is decisive,” he says in the interview, which you can read here.
It’s recommended reading for anyone chewing over what publishing platform to reach their audience through, with some choice quotes on the enduring value of a physical magazine.
“There’s a real advantage to getting a print product and having something you can hold and that, of course, is portable and has a luxurious feeling and is comfortable and immersive and you can spend time with it and it’s organized for you,” says Wenner. “As long as people want the magazine product we’ll deliver it.
“I think that’s going to be for a long time to come.”
