Avoid Going Stale: 5 Content Creation Tips
This article is part 4 in a series of 5 on how Gamification can improve your app.
Chip Pedersen, Dustin Bruzenak collaborated with Lighter Capital to host a webinar series on why gamification can help app creators across industries. Why gamify? “There are lessons from games you can learn- human psychology doesn’t change whether you’re a teenage gamer or a 50-year-old CEO. These psychology techniques will work on everyone,” says Dustin Bruzenak. Check out our tips on how game companies avoid their game going stale through new content.
Your Competition Isn’t Who You Think
One hard lesson for app creators is that, despite what you may believe, other businesses aren’t your competition. Squid Game is. You’re competing with the couch. But just like Netflix drops new original series all the time, introducing new content and features are some of the easiest ways to get people to engage with your app.
Content Is King! So Is A Schedule.
In games, “content” would be new features and new play modes. For example, new content in a racing game might be new tracks and cars to play. Content matters to your app, too. If there’s nothing new, why should the user go back?
Give a hard look to your blog. If you haven’t updated it in a few weeks or months, take the blog down until you have had time to create a content schedule.
Content schedules can be based around a quarterly or weekly schedule. Create an easy and cheap content management system. You can spend one day generating content for a whole month, and then automatically schedule the content to drop. Game creators know that holidays are a great way to build new content- you’d be shocked how many people will return to a bowling game just to collect a pumpkin-themed ball for Halloween!
Timing Is Key
Use analytics to identify your users’ highest play time. New content can be the nudge they need to play. For example, Thursday around noon, many people are looking for something to do to pass the time at work.
Sportswriters typically bury unfavorable news on a Friday- that’s when people often have plans. But your app might benefit from a Friday update. If a dating app sends users, “you’ve got 10 or 20 new matches” on a Friday during noon, people will swipe during their lunch break and look for people to meet up with on the weekend.
Test and retest to find out what day would work best for your users.
Storytime: Routine Updates Don’t Need to Break the Bank
Chip relayed an experience creating a racing game. To get users coming back, they simply implemented a more frequent tournament system. Users had a chance to not only be daily, monthly, weekly winners- but also hourly winners. A less frequent user might not be able to win the monthly tournament, but they can win the 10 AM tournament. This is an easy feature that rewards people for coming back.
Once that tool was built, it could be implemented across many different games.
Another cost-effective and engaging way to create new content is to have contests or opportunities for users to create and share content. That’s cheap for you and keeps them invested.
Keep Your Updates Consistent & Frequent
Don’t drop one big milestone update every quarter. Instead, show your customer how you are making their life better all the time. Could you automatically share new features with users every time they log in?
Remember: an app is not something that you buy and take off the shelf once a year. You want people to be using it constantly. If it’s not improving constantly, you won’t get that “stickiness.”