A related question or issue: doesn’t the tool depend on what community you’re talking about? In our book (Digital Habitats) we tried to identify tools that were “individual” versus “group” oriented, but in some ways I think “community orientation” guides tool selection quite a bit.

Thanks for your comment!

Google Translate is indeed a nice tool for languages you don’t speak and are important for (members of) your community. I didn’t mention Youtube because I think it has a lot to do with publishing, but sure, it can be used for spreading good idea’s in a community. Some people aren’t comfortable writing longer texts but can easily talk about it on camera.

I’m not sure SEO is something a community manager needs to think about. Probably a lot of us will look for ways to optimize their community for Search Engines but i think that hiring an SEO expert when you design a website (and every once in a while to check things) will prove to be more successful.

BigDoor powers far more than just badges and is a complete white-label game mechanics solution. We can power several game mechanics including, badges, points, currencies, awards, trophies, leaderboards, virtual stores, etc. All of this can be accessed via our API which results in a website/community the ability to take the results and load them into their presentation layer however they want. We handle all of the tracking, security, and management of your game. Website owners will have the flexibility to do whatever they want with our API.

On the other hand, we also know that all websites don’t have a dedicated developer on staff and are using more out-of-the-box solutions, such as wordpress to manage their websites. For Wordpres sites we have actually created our own BigDoor WordPress plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bigdoor-quick-gamification-for-wordpress/). This is just one of the several things that we are focusing on to make working with us as easy as possible.

Regardless of your tech knowledge, you should be able to add gamification to your website via the BigDoor API.

I hope that answers your questions,
Tommy

Analytics are indeed of a major importance, you need to know what triggers specific actions and you need to take action on insights. I will go into that in the blogpost after the next

Facebook is great for importing a social graph, but if your community is for professionals of some sort that doesn’t mean much. Most people haven’t befriended people they know from projects and other work-related activities. Facebook is very good to automatically fill out a profile though, or jumpstart the profile completion process.

Points/xp are a great way to start in adding game mechanics to a website. I like your “reward recipe” concept as that is exactly what a community needs to do to have a successful game added. The industry is in such an infancy state that people are jumping on the “badges train” and not looking at the overall effect of the game.

Along the “reward recipe” concept, you need that right blend of the breakdown of point awarding definitions you have above. On the one hand you want the standard x points = 1 level, but also keep it lively enough with surprise rewards that people are engaged.

A game should also be evolving all the time based on what the analytics are saying. You’ll originally setup your game to encourage the actions you find valuable on your site (comments, sign ins, etc.), but you need to keep a close eye on how its affecting your community and make appropriate changes.

Another key element is tying into your users social graph. Facebook has made this extremely easy and the people that end up sharing with their social graph become evangelist of your brand. This can be a double-edged sword though, so again, watch how the game is effecting your community and be agile enough to be iterative on the game mechanics.

At http://bigdoor.com we have created a powerful API that can power game mechanics on any website and have an in-depth analytics system to help you keep track of how your game is going.

Or am I missing something?