Building a community for your game is one of the surest signs that you’re onto a good thing. You can’t buy a community – it relies on genuine, organically-formed feelings and bonds between your players. However, you can put some features in place that can help that community to form.

We looked at some of the ways you can build a community in this article, but in this post we’ll explore how and why community competitions can give your game a big engagement boost, particularly those that make use of gameplay replays by asking players to share in order to enter.

We’ll also look at some of the technical aspects of getting your competition up and running on various platforms using the Megacool SDK. But first, let’s look at some quick general tips for making a competition a success for you and your players.

How to run a successful community competition

Don’t lose sight of your goal: your competition is intended to get more people sharing game replays to social channels, which in turn will help refer more people to the game. Referral programs deliver a boost to acquisition, retention, engagement and monetization, and your competition should be structured and promoted with that goal in mind.

Use a tone of voice that’s true to your game: we recently looked at how important great copy is for referral marketing, and a community competition is no different. You want your players to find this competition appealing, and feel motivated to take part – and so keeping your tone of voice consistent with the rest of your game is vital.

Communicate clearly: it’s vital your players know exactly how the competition works, what the prize is, and how they can get involved. Related to that…

Keep it simple: don’t ask your players to do too much, or they’ll tune out. The fewer hoops they have to jump through, the more likely they are to engage with the competition – which means it’s more likely to be a success for you.

Now that we’ve got those down, let’s see how each platform in turn can be used for a competition that takes advantage of the capabilities of Megacool’s SDK.

Twitter

Twitter is one of the best and most flexible platforms to use for a community competition. Sharing via the Megacool SDK is smooth for developers and players alike, as you can package together a media file (such as a GIF or a screenshot), pre-written text and a link, all ready for the player to share with minimal effort required on their part.

To make this work, you need to simply inform your players to:

1. Activate sharing in the game – for example, complete a game, earn an achievement, or any other moment of gameplay that leads to a sharing prompt
2. Select the desired sharing platform (Twitter, in this case)
3. Add optional information specific to the competition – for example, their username, or some competition-specific text or hashtag. This information needs to be clearly stated by the rules of the competition, so that there’s no confusion for players.
4. Hit share!

Super-simple. Community managers can then comb through the entries on social and select winners.

Facebook

Facebook is a slightly more cumbersome platform for competitions, but can still be very effective. The main difference is that, unlike Twitter, on Facebook you can only share either a media file or a link or pre-set text – not all together.

The good news is that with Megacool, players will be able to share a link that previews the in-game content when posting to their wall, and link back to the game.

Similar to Twitter, the steps are as follows:

1. Activate sharing in the game – for example, complete a game, earn an achievement, or any other moment of gameplay that leads to a sharing prompt
2. Select the desired sharing platform (Facebook, if they are sharing to their wall/in a group)
3. Add optional information specific to the competition – for example, their username, or some competition-specific text or hashtag. This information needs to be clearly stated by the rules of the competition, so that there’s no confusion for players.
4. Hit share!

You can also pull entries into a single destination by asking players to enter by commenting on a post on your own Facebook page, for example. In that case, in step 2 above, Players have to select “Copy”, which will copy the link to the replay and then post it as a reply on your page’s post – here’s how Hollywood Story ran a competition:

Instagram

Instagram has high potential impact for running competitions – after all, you’re asking players to share something visual – gameplay replays or screenshots – and Instagram is as visual a social platform as you can get.

The main limitation is that Instagram only allows users to share replay videos – you can’t provide players with pre-set text or links back to the game for when they share. This means that only shares can be tracked, not views or anything related to player behavior after the share.

This also means you’ll need to ask your players to include a competition-specific hashtag when they go to share to Instagram. That way, community managers can easily access all entries via the hashtag, and use that to select their winners.

In order to run a competition on Instagram, you need to advise your players to follow these steps:

1. Activate sharing in the game – for example, complete a game, earn an achievement, or any other moment of gameplay that leads to a sharing prompt
2. Select the desired sharing platform (Instagram, in this case)
3. Add optional information specific to the competition – for example, their username, or some competition-specific text or hashtag. This information needs to be clearly stated by the rules of the competition, so that there’s no confusion for players.
4. Hit share!

Leverage shared content to market your game

So, you’ve successfully got your players sharing content on social channels in order to enter competitions. But that’s really just the start – now it’s time to try and leverage that shared content as much as possible, to help market your game even further.

Every entry to your competition is something potentially worth sharing with the wider community. This is where your community managers can start to compile the best clips into curated content. These video compilations could focus on the best gameplay moments, the funniest fails, crazy trickshots or whatever is most fitting for your game.

By publicising entries in compilation videos, you create an even stronger bond with your players. You also motivate them to participate in future competitions, or even send you their best game replays unprompted: the chance to be a “featured” player in a community is a powerful and appealing status symbol!

Summary

Competitions can help grow and strengthen your game’s community, as well as spreading awareness about your game. They incentivize players to show off their best moments, and also provide community managers with plenty of great content with which to promote your game.

Using the Megacool SDK, community competitions can be seamlessly orchestrated across an array of platforms. To learn more about growing your game’s audience with Megacool, visit our blog or check out our site.