Your company has been blogging for a while but you're having a tough time getting enough people involved. It's hard to blame people because everyone has plenty of work to keep them busy. Still, you're searching for a way to get some of your colleagues off the fence and into your blog production. How about making a game out of it?
From playing rounds of golf to checking in on Foursquare, Americans love a good leaderboard. This post will explain how you can get your colleagues engaged by bringing a friendly sense of gaming competition to your blog.
Games aren't just for children
Gamification in blogging means creating a contest where employees are rewarded for their participation in some way, or rewarded for getting the most page views or social shares for the month.
Basically, you're getting people involved by making it really fun (and bringing out competitive rivalries). The best thing is that you don't have to break the bank to gamify your blogging. Sometimes bragging rights alone are enough (i.e. "I had the most page views for October.") Here are a few other ideas that go beyond bragging:
Coffee card: Give your winner a $20 gift card to Starbucks or a local coffee shop where they can buy coffee, tea or snacks.
Profile icons: Create a system of digital rewards such as icons that signify a threshold of some sort (10 blog posts, 50 blog posts, etc.) that you can put on the profile pages of individual employees. It might seem silly to honor someone as a "Blogging Ninja" or "Blogging Jedi Master," but the whole idea is to make it fun and spur competition.
Overall participation incentive: You can reward your entire blogging team with a monthly reward for meeting your goals over a specified time period. For example, tell them you're going to buy lunch for the team every month in which they produce a given number of posts, or that your company achieves a certain threshold of website traffic for the month.
Treat blog stars like rock stars
At the end of the year, recognize those employees who have contributed the most to your blogging effort. Give awards at a company meeting for the most prolific blogger, the blogger who achieved the most social shares for a single post, the blogger who earned the highest number of page views for a single post, and the like. Small trophies or cerfiticates are appropriate awards.