In my last post I introduced the concept of a fantasy content league. Similar to a fantasy football league, a content league assigns point values to each of the various content marketing activities conducted by the players (your subject matter experts). The competition created through this gamification model will lead to a much higher velocity of content generation from your organization. Here are some ideas on how to get your fantasy content league started.
The Players
Start by selecting a list of players. You may have multiple categories of players to reflect the different positions they play on the team. For example, you may have a category of creators. These are the players that write blog posts, create SlideShare presentations and share updates on Twitter.
Another category might be conversationalists. These players do not necessarily generate original content, but engage in dialogue with others about their content. The conversationalists are the ones who comment on blogs, write Amazon reviews and debate topics on LinkedIn groups.
You might have a third category of players that are more passive, but still participate. Let’s call them repeaters. These are the ones that will like Facebook pages, retweet great posts and build social bookmarks.
Of course, it is possible to have a player that falls into more than one of the three categories. These MVPs will be the highly coveted first picks most sought after during the draft process.
The Point System
Next, you will need to develop a point system by which to recognize the contributions of players. You will need to have different types of points for each category and they will have to be weighted accordingly.
For creators you will need to issue two types of points. The first types of points will be for content generated:
- Blog Post – 3 point
- YouTube Video – 3 points
- SlideShare Presentation – 3 points
- Twitter Post – 1 point
The second type of point will be for content that generates a response from others:
- Each comment on Blog Post – 1 point
- Each like on a YouTube Video – 1 point
- Each like on a SlideShare Presentation – 1 point
- Each RT of a Tweet – 1 point
For Conversationalists you might have a different point system:
- Each comment on Blog Post – 1 point
- Each comment in LinkedIn Group – 1 point
And for Repeaters you might offer:
- Each RT of another player’s Tweet – 1 point
The Draft Process
You will need to decide who can participate in your fantasy content league. You might restrict it to just the marketing organization. Or you might extend participation to anyone in the company. You will need to decide what comprises a team. For example, you might allow each participant to select two creators, four conversationalists and eight repeaters.
Each of your participants will then choose a team. In a typical fantasy league each player can only be drafted by one participant. But if you have a small company with only a few creators then you will need to bend the rules. For example you might allow each player to be selected up to five times. After the initial draft you will need to decide upon rules for allowing drops, additions and trading of players between participants.
The Scoreboard
You will then need to publish a weekly scoreboard that tallies all of the activity for each player in the league. And you will need to show which participants have picked the best combinations of players. The participant whose team roster generated the highest number of points throughout the year is the winner. Of course, you will want to recognize the individual player who generated the highest number of points as well.
The visibility associated with this weekly ranking will create a competitive spirit amongst the players that encourages them to try to outdo one another. You as the marketing organization benefit from an increasing wealth of content being generated. So no matter how the scoreboard rankings play out, the real winner is always you – the marketing organization.
