Gamification is a simple and effective way to increase brand loyalty and foster engagement. Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) features a points-based reward system that incentivizes users to engage with others in the community by receiving points for performing various actions.
- These points are then used to reward users in a number of ways, each of which is outlined in the Gamification features section below.
Benefits of community gamification
Gamification can help support your community goals by building brand loyalty, encouraging participation, and driving engagement.
Brand loyalty is nurtured when a brand successfully develops an emotional connection with its customers: when customers feel emotionally connected to a brand, they’re more likely to stick with it, even as other factors may otherwise drive them to explore other options.
Four key emotions that evoke brand loyalty are:
- Feelings of belonging: The person feels as though they are part of something larger and that they belong, are accepted and are not alone.
- Feeling of importance: The person feels as though they can contribute as a member of the social circle and have a voice. They feel as though they matter.
- Feeling of security: The person feels safe being connected to other like-minded individuals and doesn’t have to worry about being judged.
- Feeling of happiness: Last but not least is the feeling of happiness that comes with social connectivity due to the positive emotions noted above.
Gamification directly impacts community participation because it gives users a reason to participate. Including game elements in a community acts as incentive to participate; it provides people with the opportunity to earn points, badges, etc.
It’s one thing to participate in a community, but it’s another to be engaged. Engagement is when a person participates in a meaningful way over a long period of time. One way to establish customer engagement in your community is to strategically implement a gamification system that encourages participation.
In addition to these other elements, gamification boosts community engagement because it taps into one of humanity's most primitive ideals: the desire to compete.
Gamification in Vanilla
Ready to get started with gamification in your Vanilla community? Check out:
Gamification features
Let's take a quick look at each of the elements of Vanilla's gamification system.
Points
Users can earn points by:
- answering questions (provided this is enabled in the Q&A addon settings),
- having their answer to a question marked as accepted (provided this is enabled in the Q&A addon settings)
- receiving positive reactions on any type of post they've authored (users do NOT receive points for reacting to other users' content),
- and earning badges.
You can choose how many points each action is worth in order to encourage the type of behavior that you want to see in the community.
Badges
You can not only select from a variety of default, out-of-the-box badges but also create your own custom badges.
Reactions
Reactions are a feature that helps people build their reputation. With it, users can share how they feel about a post by giving it one of many reactions, such as Like, Agree, Disagree, and more.
While default reactions are available, administrators can customize this feature to suit the brand.
Ranks
Ranks allow you to reward users for positive actions. By default, ranks are awarded based on points earned, but can be customized by time spent on the site, by a user's Role, and even a combination of these. Ranks can be used to limit abilities and/or reward members in your community based on Vanilla's reputation system.
Leaderboards
Include a leaderboard that displays the names of the leaders and their points. With Vanilla, you’re able to have a leaderboard for “weekly” leaders, “daily” leaders, and “all-time” leaders.
Gamification strategies article
Check out Vanilla's A Strategic Guide to Community Gamification for more great ideas on how to implement Gamification into your community.
Additional resources
Click the link below to access a video expanding on what you learned in this article.