Pacing of the ‘share’ feature in your gamification strategy

While playing an online game, especially considering Facebook, we see, share with friends option recurring frequently. In this post I would like to discuss about the right interval of pacing a share pop-up.To begin with, we need to think about why we need to use a share feature, primarily because of these reasons

• Build audience
• Viral marketing
• to get more page hits etc.

While designing for the share feature in your gamification module you must first think about the player who will be sharing. You should ask yourself what is the need to share that this player will be willing to share the content voluntarily, is it the player is getting some 100 bonus points for each share, or there is an accomplishment that the player has achieved and the player thinks that it will be a meaningful thing to share among friends.

If you agree with the latter part you are thinking right, there is no ah ha moment when sharing just for points, it is a forced thing on the player which the player will not enjoy at all. But what if the player has a milestone unlocked, or just made an awesome score, in this case most of the players will be more than willing to share their score on the platform so that they can be praised. Getting praised by others is a powerful gamification mechanic. Sharing of a meaningful activity like “I just earned a badge learning R” will make the social group of the player more interested and curious (drive 7 of octalysis framework) to check the platform that is helping the current player in improving skills which are desired by other players as well . If you provide a meaningful sharing opportunity players will be willing to click that button actively.

Another point to be noted here is, sharing can be of two types random or selective. If you are having a generic product which anyone can use, or will like to check out then the design having a generic share is not a problem. But if the product is highly customized and you feel that only selective audience needs to be attracted, you should also see this from the player perspective. If you empower the player for selectively sharing, and also rewarding the player for sharing with target audience that will actually engage, the player will also experience the drive of social influence & relatedness (drive 5 of octalysis framework) when known user group is actively using the product, and hence driving a long term engagement.

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