Brandon Coppernoll Internet marketing, social media, web based strategy and development in Indiana

Gaming and Social Media – lessons inside gaming

I work at Fusework Studios, a creative internet strategy agency which specializes in turning Web sites into conversion machines and helping with businesses' bottom lines. One of our core focuses is how to use your social media outlets to convert traffic into qualified leads to your site.

I've been competitively gaming for about five months now on Gamebattles.com with a Left 4 Dead team primarily put together with family, but in the process I've come to know several individuals through our team that I'd even go as far as calling friends. These are people I would have never met if it weren't through the capabilities of gaming that we enjoy today by playing online with other people around the world.

Since forming our team in February, I've been able to expand upon the idea of just being a team on a Web site playing a video game. I've taken several steps at increasing awareness not only for our team, but the ladder in which our team participates. Here are some examples:

• We have had logos and avatars created for our team.
• We created a Twitter account: http://twitter.com/handfulofdeath in which news can be posted about the team.
• We have a blog: http://handfulofdeath.wordpress.com
• We have two team members (myself included) that now stream our matches live as they happen: http://justin.tv/xh21x and http://justin.tv/mullet863.
• We have several members that are active in the forums on the site discussing rules, tournaments and exciting things that go on.

So you might be thinking as to where the lessons may lie in this mayhem. To me the lesson is to have one centralized target, which for myself and the team, is to drive traffic and awareness to our team as well as Gamebattles.com. If the ladder becomes more successful then there are more teams to play. Which is why we joined in the first place. Every "outpost" where we have something about our team all say "Gamebattles" or "Gamebattles.com" in some fashion and tell everyone who we are and where we're from.

Business and even personal use for social media can be done in the same way whether it's micro sites, email campaigns or social media done at its finest. A successful strategy points all "outposts" to the same ultimate directive even if it's as simple as a contact us conversion form on the main Web site. A good strategy utilizes facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and other outlets to drive potential customers to the site to contact the company to eventually offer their services.

In our case, it's to get gamers onto Gamebattles.com and to learn more about the Left 4 Dead ladder. I'd be interested to hear what you think of this synopsis. I'm just tying in my life experiences even in video games to how businesses can use the lessons learned. Any ideas? Thoughts?