Photo Hosting Community Has Positive and Humorous Traits
Imgur.com is a photo hosting site made up of internet memes, funny photos, gifs, karma points and full on wit. Needless to say, it’s a huge time suck.
After only spending a few minutes in the gallery, you can easily recognize what their members hold dear; sentimental moments and pure entertainment. Read more 
PAX East 2012: I’m Going Going, Back Back
It’s that time of year again for gamers to invade Boston. PAX East kicks off Friday April 6th and runs through Sunday April 8th at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. It brings together some of the most passionate video game enthusiasts to interact with some of the most influential game developers in the industry.
Similar to previous years, after I build my agenda, I like to share it with you so you can see for yourselves the parallels between enterprise community management and community management Read more
The Easiest Community Manager’s Post; The Year-in-Review
If you’re looking for content ideas to finish out the year strong, there’s nothing easier than the year-in-review post. The content already exists. It’s just a matter of compiling a collection of the most popular posts from across the community.
What’s considered the most popular? It’s really up to you to decide the criteria. Base it on the most commented on, most viewed, most replies, highest rated or most likes. Or some combination of thereof. Just make sure you’re highlighting posts that align with your strategy. Read more
Gamification of Online Communities – Head to Head
I’m sure you’re all use to hosting contests and giveaways in your respective online communities as a way to boost activity and member morale, keep members engage and create compelling content. You pit each member against each other to see who can come up with the best “x” or the most “y.” I’m still all for that and community managers should still lean on this competitiveness as integral component to their community strategy.
This is the third installment for the Gamification of Online Communities series. See also:
- Gamification of Online Communities for Beginners
- Gamification of Online Communities – Advanced Edition
A great way to rally your community together is to hold competitions against other online communities. Nothing embodies the meaning of community when every member is charging after the same goal.
Find a competitor community or one that closely aligns with your product, function or service, contact their community manager (This is a great networking opportunity too) and work out the rules, guidelines, winning criteria and prizes the same way you would with any competition. As you can tell, this tactic is mutually beneficial for both communities.
Gamification of Online Communities – Advanced Edition
As a follow up to Gamification of Online Communities for Beginners, I thought I’d take it a step further and provide a strategy for the more advanced communities that may be looking to keep up the competitive momentum.
Taking a lesson from fantasy sports, more notably, fantasy football because I’m a [American] football nut; let’s apply the same concept to online communities. Members form teams to compete against other teams within the same community. Using the built-in gaming mechanics of your community platform, the collective points achieved from each activity performed by each team would determine the top leaders week-to-week, month-to-month. Heck, you could even replicate a full season with playoffs and a Super Bowl. This approach takes the meaning of social collaboration to a whole new level.
The team lineup will depend on the type of community you manage and its strategy. I’ll leave it to your creative minds to dictate, but if you need help, hit me up for feedback.
See also: “Gamification of Online Communities – Head to Head”
Photo credit: tambako
