Wednesday, June 3, 2009

What Does World of Warcraft and Social Media Have in Common?





World of Warcraft (WoW) are for many people much more than a game, it is a lifestyle, and dedicated gamers live more in the WoW universe than in the real world. What can we learn from it in securing the successful use of social media ?

This article is based on an article in Mashable (11.05.09) by Stuart Foster: "6 Things World of Warcraft Can Teach You About Social Media Success.". I've never played WoW but use social media all the time and can readily easily see the connection between Wow and social media. I have put my own comments and thoughts into this artircle, so if you want to read the pure article, google the title above.

1. Success in social media requires constant dedication
In World of Warcraft there is a phenomenon called "Dailies," or daily quests. These quests may be to kill a monster, collect treasures, talking with someone or whatever.
In social media are also "Dailies" you must follow a little, add new friends, respond to your blog, post status updates, etc. If you don't do these "Dailies" one or two days is not it great, but you are away for too long, smoke you out of the game.

You must pay attention, write some articles and posts and care of your relationships to achieve success with social media.

2. Participation requires strategy and cooperation
WoW is primarily composed of giant cave complexes. To explore a cave and kill a enemy, you usually need 25 players of all types working together. This requires good coordination and strategic abilities so even though the social media world is more complex, you are well on the way if you can manage the battle in WoW.
If you do not effectively communicate who you are and what your goals are, there is no one listening. Be clear speechless and give you time to shape your thoughts meaningfully and with edge.

Like in WoW, there are also ad-ons and other tools to make it easier to coordinate your accounts on social media. Use the right tools too.

3. Set your goals and make a strategy
If you want to see progress in WoW you can't just walk around without a goal through. Other players will soon abandon you and find other players who have same goals as themselves, goals that lies implicitly in the game, namely war.
Similarly, it is with social media. If you have no idea what you want with your presence on social media, you will quickly be buried. Be active, you set goals and make a strategy for how you reach your goals. Also remember to learn from your and others' mistakes!

Strategy in social media can be very diffuse and hard to get started, but start in the small. What do you do with your account? Want to learn something? Want to build a network around your work or your interest? Want to just be known? From here you can build a strategy. On Twitter it could be to follow people that is known to be knowledgeable in order to learn something, to follow people with similar training or interest in building a network or just to follow all, for the sake of being known and have many followers.

4. It's all about networking
Wow are organized around Guilds (clans), the stronger your guild is, the more powerful you are. This also applies to both social media and in the real world, both developed through networking.
No matter how clever you are into something you can only use your skills when your skills were known by others, it is through others' recognition and recommendations that you achieve "status" in your field.

5. Participate in new media and create new communication pathways
In Wow, your success depends on that you have built a good team of helpful and talented players who can heal you when you are injured, can help with rare weapons, etc.
New social media pup ups all the time up and you do not have to try all, but you must be willing to try new and learn how to conduct up to the media.

I refer primarily to Twitter. My calling is to follow as many peopel on Twitter as possible, you can always unfollow if there is too much noise in their Tweet. By following many good Twitter it gives you news, links to good articles and a large, albeit not very close network.

This is no different than building a football team or a business, talented players or employees make a strong team where everyone will be better than they were when they were alone.

6. Do you deserve the recognition and respect of others
In World of Warcraft, it is essential to recruit new "friends" to advance and the more competent your "friends" are, the greater the chance of success is.
Basically WoW is a game where you must build your own success, but the game is structured so that your personal success is dependent on others. The more you help others, the more you get back. By helping others you are building recognition, respect and confidence in your personality, qualities that will help you to success in social media.

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