Posts Tagged ‘incentives’

Social networks can be a valuable tool when it comes to getting your name out there, but while many businesses have a Facebook page it’s surprising how often little to no effort is put into using them effectively. No mater how diligently you answer comments on your wall, there will come a time when your user base will grow bored. Here are a few sure fire ways to keep them interested and coming back.

Incentive Programs

A good starting place for making sure your user base sticks around is to give them a reason to. It’s pretty commonplace to see sweepstakes and giveaways as a way to encourage more people to comment, like, and generally keep interest high. What is less common and far more effective, however, is to make a game out of it. As an example, if you implemented a system where points are given for various actions—ten points for liking a page, maybe twenty for referring another user to like the page, and five points for every comment posted—you’re immediately giving your users something to work towards and a sense of progression not unlike those found in video games.

Best Using the Point System

Once you have a system like this put in place, it’s important that when an eventual winner, or winners of this game are chosen, no one feels cheated or like their time was wasted. The best way to do this is to foster a sense of community, and make your users feel like they are working together rather than against one another. A good example of a way to implement this is to keep a grand point total as well as an individual point total, and give incentives to the entire community at various points. When the grand total reaches one hundred thousand points lets say, everyone gets a coupon code for five percent off at your or maybe a partner retailer. This increases sales, makes everyone feel like they have won, and keeps interest in your page extremely high.

Source:

• jeffbullas.com by Heather Green
• Image by Master Isolated Images

“Without question, the social gaming market is the newly hot space in the game industry.  Some of the leading developers have emerged as companies only in the last few years and in that time have managed to gather tens of millions of both dollars and users from these games.   With these outstanding numbers and increasing sociality of games not only on the web, but on mobile and console platforms as well, it seems like a very attractive market to enter.  However, for all its potential, it’s a place that many independent developers and traditional game publishers are having difficulty being successful in.  The reason for this is because these games are overwhelmingly financed by microtransactions of virtual goods, and knowing how to inspire users to pay you for virtual goods is something that’s not easy to master.

This article will attempt to shed light on these economics within the social games market, what kind of opportunity exists for new entrants, and provide strategies that independent developers with limited resources can use to make a successful entry into the market.  This article is one of a two part series that will focus on strategies independent developers can use to be successful.  The next will focus on strategies for publishers to enter the space.”

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RewardJS is not a JavaScript library. It’s an incentive program to thank JavaScript developers for contributing to open source libraries, for fun or for profit. To kick things off, in the month of May, you have a chance to earn an iPad 2, a MacBook Air, or an all-expense-paid trip to the next jQuery Conference. And those are just three of the prizes, there’s a different prize every day and every week. There’s no limit to the amount you can win. See the Rules for full details.

How it works

Fix a bug. Get a prize.

• Daily prizes ($50-400 each) to the developer that closes the most bugs each day, Mon-Fri
• Weekly prizes ($750-1250 each) to the developer that closes the most bugs each week, Mon-Sat
• Monthly grand prize ($2000-3000) to the developer that closes the most bugs in the 4-week campaign.

You can find all the information at http://rewardjs.com/

CrowdTwist powers loyalty everywhere. Their next generation loyalty platform allows users to earn points for any activity they do online, both on your site and wherever else your brand lives (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube). Users compete against themselves and others to prove dedication to your brand and move closer to earning unique rewards, prize packages and discounts, all the while driving significantly more engagement, brand interaction and revenue. CrowdTwist’s loyalty software is able to unify your disparate online presence into a singular, revenue-driving platform.

The Internet is a vast landscape and your audience spends their time in many different places. CrowdTwist’s activity engine intelligently tracks consumer interactions with your brand both on and off your website (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, iTunes, Ticketmaster, Amazon, etc.) like consuming, creating & sharing content, commenting, playing games, purchasing, etc. This system encourages increased engagement while driving rich data into their Control Center.

Proprietary CrowdTwist software and algorithms manage activity priority and point values to keep users coming back again and again to earn points. User levels and badges are awarded based on their number of points and evolving engagement activities. These points can then be used for real world rewards and discounts, not just a virtual good.

You can find all the information at http://www.crowdtwist.com/

Engage is a new web-hosted tool that makes it very easy to monitor the performance of teams, and motivate them to do their best when things are not really going as expected. Any manager will be able to clearly define what must be done by each and every member of the team, and feedback can be served in a timely (and open) way. The performance of every team member can be reviewed and rated, both when it comes to individual goals and in the grand scheme of things.

Read more: http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/engage-calibreapps-com-set-goals-for-your-team