Its the hottest trend in business. Gamefication, how can you use it to engage customers . And hot bread, the ceo of panera with high smallis owners can make lots of dough. Its time for your business. Whats the name of the game Small Businesses are revitalizing the economy and American Express open is here to help. Thats why we are proud to present your business on msnbc. Hi there, everyone. Im j. J. Ramberg. And welcome to a new year of yb yb. Your business. Were starting off the show talk about one the biggest trends in business, gamefication. Most of you havent heard the term. And this is more than just a Loyalty Program than freelgt flier miles its a whole new way of speaking about how customers interact with your business. Theres facebook. Theres youtube. Theres angry birds and twitter. Just to name a few of the big digital time grabbers. With so much out there vying for peoples attention, what can a Small Business do to get noticed . Were a daily newspaper. Weve been here since 1938. Silas lions is the editor of the record are searchlight in georgia. When he was drafted to get this new online newspaper in 2006 he wasnt much worried about getting people to fiepgd his site. When we looked at the audience. We said, we dont have an audience program. Were growing the audience pretty rapidly. We were the hadding a little under 1 million page views at that time. In those days, success was measured by the number of eyeballs on your site. Back then the numbers were good. With behind sooigt, however, silas said there was another problem people didnt recognize. People are going to reading. Com and getting their news and going away. Today, that kind of engagement isnt good enough to grow a website. Silas said he needs customers to be loyal to the site, to be ambassadors, spreading the word, even business bodies sharing their views. Hey, theres value in people commenting. All of those are strong indicators of now were getting that. Engagement is considered the key to growth. But how does a small lowtech bit get people to interact and be engaged . Were using policing words with the word engagement. We want to look at a more holistic view of the consumer interacts. Gabe, the ceo of dopamine knows a lot be engages customers. He said people will Pay Attention to your brand if you challenge them and give them incentives. Feedback, freedom and fun. People get rewards for becoming involved. Something that marketers like gabe called gamefication. Gamefication is all over the place today in boy scout badges. In the militia tore. Belts in karate. The founder of the silicone valley based bunchbal that helps to build Customer Engagement with this kind of Game Mechanics. Really, you just dont want mass consumption of that, right . You want people going out there and doing something actively with your brand and thats what gamefication does. I would say from where i sit, bunchbal is basically an engagement service. To get people genuinely involved, gabe and renat said you need to offer so special. Lets say youre part of the lady gaga fan club. I can guarantee you all of those top 100 fans will take the insider access to the tour diary, right . If youve got a ruby regular are guest at your restaurant, making sure that that person can always get a reservation even on new years eve, that doesnt cost you any money. Since silas in a rock star and didnt run a restaurant, he had to find something it to offer his customers. Thats when he turned to bunchbal. He was one of the first persons that thought of Game Mechanics beyond the traditional game environment. Rajat thought about letting people post. A light bulb lights up next to joes comment. One person thought that his comment was insightful and that stays with the comment. And by using this reputation system, the idea could be that the entire community could Work Together to determine who should we Pay Attention to. As each commentator gets more votes they receive trophy badges letting other readers know whos most popular this in turn gets others engaged and it begins to feel like a game. Whenever we engage in any system, we ask whats in it for me. And you sbrets an answer to that question otherwise its meaningless. For redding. Com readers that kind of communication can be highly valuable but its also something that cant be bought for money. We were hitting a little under a million page views at that time in 06. And today, over the summer, we crossed the 6 million mark. Its been a very rapid increase in how much people are actually using that. So part of what gamefication is doing, its challenging this marketing concept that we need to give people discounts all the time to get their action. For businesses like silas, this kind of gamefication pays back in the form of revenue. Implementing what we did with bunchbal we saw about a 25 increase on volume on the site. It doesnt need to make a great product but a great product alone is insufficient to cut through the noise in todays market. Gamefication isnt for every Small Business, but it may help yours. We have three great experts in field to talk about this today. Mike martocha is the cofounder at dopamine. He consults with some of the startings for playful games. Adam rich is the cofounder and editor in chief. And daniel pink is the author of the bestselling books about the changing world of work. His latest book is to sell is human, the surprising truth about moving others. Great to see all three of you. Great to see you. My weve heard about gamefication, foursquare made it a big deal. Thats what put it all in the psyches, if you dont think back to the what they said about boy scout badges. Do a couple things youll get a badge. Do a couple other thing, youll get a badge. Then youll get to be a superthrill lister. How do you get people to care . First of all, you have to have a great product. One of the magics about gamefication strategy is gaming itself you got to think about the overarching strategy. And the goal that youre looking to achieve as a business, is it readership . Is it somebody buying more of your product or people coming into shop more in the store. Look at those actions and behaviors and find a way to encourage and incentivize those things through Game Mechanics, behavorial economics and also royalty reward programs. Do you think you can get people to do something that they wouldnt have already been interested in doing . For instance, it might be interesting on my website to get people to share a lot and theyre not sharing a lot. Now can i suddenly but Game Mechanics in and get them to share . I would say no. I think thats a question of having them be a layer on top of the service and the value youre already providing. And really, thinking about why the reader would want to share, whats in it for them. Ultimately, that needs to be a service also. How hard, dan, how hard is Something Like this to do . Is it something that you can put on your site or any kind of company that running pretty quickly and expecting it to work or is it something that takes a little time . Actually, i think it taking a little time. Im going to echo what adam and mark said about having a great product. I think there are three essential first steps. Have something great to offer to your customers, have something great to offer to your customers and have something great to offer to your customers. I think this can enhance engagement for your products but i dont think it cant engage what inherently isnt creative. For the brands that people love, apple, google, zappos, they dont do this because they have something so profoundly engaging they dont need to do this. Ho do you look at your company and decide this is right for me or not and how do you start . First to start with, you find out what are the goals for the company and understanding what are the behavior, what are the actions that you want to drive consumers or individuals engaged with your product to more or less achieve. And thats where the creative thought comes in, right . How do we design a game or a challenge per se to really make them think about your product and want to participate in what you have to offer. This can be Something Big or little, or just something to get facebook likes . Exactly. Its fun, feedback and fun. This is a fascinating topic. A lot of Science Behind it. Thank you guys for all discussing it with us. Its a new year. And that means is it a great time to reevaluate your Small Business. So is your website up to par . Here now are five tips to make sure your home page is easily access football your customers courtesy of ink. Com. One, fix your contact and then leave it alone for a while. You edit your tweets means the crawler has to start over. Two, claim your google authorship. Is have where google plus can link your profile to your site making it easier for people to find it. Three, write linkable content. The more people link to your site, the more people will find it. Four, syndicate your content. Onsites like side show with links back to your site. Or post your videos on your own site as well as on youtube. And five, stop the thieves. Make sure text on your website isnt being used illegal on another site using the tool k3scape. I suspect a lot of people out there manage people on your team, consultants who are programmers or engineers and i suspect you dont uvndz a thing theyre talking and this makes it tricky. When a programmer says something is going to take three weeks, if you dont have a background in technology, you kind of have to take him at his word, right. Ive invited joel today. Joel is founder of Stack Exchange and a recognized expert on development that has a blog as well. Thanks for having me on. I hear this from a lot of people that they feel almost held prisoner by their i. T. Team. If you tell your marketing person, we need this Marketing Program launched, you can tell what theyre doing. But its i. T. Team, its like behind this dark cloud. How do you deal with that . The first advice i give people is make sure you got two phases to the projects. A design phase and an implementation phase. I think where they go wrong, they try to dive into something and you never know what youre going to get when youre done. So at what point you can say you can say you have two weeks for design or three weeks for implementation, or do you not know the implementation until you set the design . Yeah, thats exactly it. I think even programmers dont know this. So thats your job, i think, to steer them and to say, lets make a complete list of what you have to do. Lets draw what the screens look like. Figure out the pages on the website that have to work. And then go through the list and make a list of the work that has to be done. So this is like anything where you can be a perfectionist, or put a band aid and make it work. How can you as a manager explain to your team and say, hey, we either need this to be perfect 0 are not so perfect and know that theyre following through on what you want . I think the most important thing is to make sure i. T. And developers understand the business that youre in. I think theres a tendency to kind of leave them in a box and say well you need to build this for me. What you need to do is make them understand what your motivations are, how important it is to be early, versus high quality. Those are all Business Decisions and the i. T. Team is going to be making and the programmer is going to be making hundreds and hundreds of decisions. They have to get that picture to convey your business. And one last thing i wanted to talk to you about. You said its very easy for techies, when its an interesting project, theyll say this is easy, and if its a project theyre not interested in, theyll say, oh, this is going to take three months. You can suss that out by seeing how interested they are. Thats a part of the vision. Get them on the same page about what the goals of the business are. You may be incentivizing them that may, maybe they have Stock Options or are part of the business and they will have the set of ultimate goals and theyll probably be interested in the same goals that youre interested in. I find, too, with technology with people ive worked with, a lot of these people are incredibly smart and have real vision for how the company can move forward, too. So if you put somebody in a box and say go program the site you might be missing out on ideas. You might be demote vating them by making them feel like theyre just a plumber, really. Joel, thank you. When we come back, adam and daniel answer some of your Small Business questions, including how to add a brick and mortar store. And the ceo of panera bread tells us why its important to think small in this weeks learning from the pros. Im on the road weve all had those moments. When you lost the thing you cant believe you lost. When what you just bought, just broke. Or when you have a little trouble a long way from home. As an American Express cardmember you can expect some help. But what you might not expect, is you can get all this with a prepaid card. Spends like cash. Feels like membership. Hi, im gabe zikerman. And heres how you get your business into the game. Gamefication is a great way of creating unprecedented engagement with consumers and employees. In order to really make it work, though, you want to give them a series of challenges to follow. Rather than asking customers to try your products ask them to try four or five of your products and earn a special badge. You want to make sure your challenges progress with difficulty by using challenges with creating engagements. Your leverage engagement to change the way your business operates and create an unprecedented connection with customers and employees. Here at your business, we like to practice what we preach so weve created a plan based on gamefication. For the next three weeks, were conducting a contest on our Facebook Page and wed love to have you participate. This weeks contest is something we can all relate to. That person with the messiest desk. Want to play, go to msnbc your business Facebook Page. Take a picture of your own or someone elses disaster desk. The winner will get a bunch of yr yr goodies, including a copy of the book its your business and a very coveted your business coffee mug. It always makes sense to keep up with the latest trends so lets check that on to wit tore see what hot topics entrepreneurs are talking. Usa today reporter Rhonda Abrams says, my best advice, find a really good Small BusinessHealth Insurance broker. Bar are molts writes the sum of our emotional and rational experiences makes a positive customer experience. And the New York Times blogger gene marks says, i love the cloud, but for 2012, i gave it a cplus. Its time now to answer some of your business questions. Adam and dan are with us once again. The first one comes from cristina, and she writes. I own a busy fouryearold business sharpening knives, scissors, bonsai tools and garden tools. I have recently ines business sales. Do you think its good to have an internet store. I do not have experience designing or developing one. Well, i would certainly recommend she not design one and find something off the shelf and let someone else deal with all the nuances of that. You can go down that rabbit hole in building your own. Ecommercial solution is an incredibly costly thing and youve got to be doing it for a reason. What do you think, dan . What about starting on et ceteracy or ebay or something . You can think of that as you would, say, an electrical utility or plumbing system. Do you want to do that all by yourself . No, youve got a business to run. I would try that off the shelf. One of the other things, for scheduling knife sharpening, some kind of offtheshelf Scheduling Software that would free up the staff to probably taking appointments via telephone. Yes, okay. Youre both right. Something off the shelf and how easy is that to find . Its really easy. I think you listed a couple good options there etcy is the perfect place. My question is does doing so dilute your image as experts in your fields . Dan, what do you think . Not necessarily. It depends what you mean by aggregati aggregation . You can get that putting the best pieces in a way that users and readers find valuable. Agra gags isnt a magic solution but expertise through contacts can be extraordinarily valuable. I agree. Theres a value in being the filter. If you think about it in terms of music, its like being the deejay. Can you simply be the curator, or do you need to add your own information, too . I dont know if i see that possible. If the act of curation, you jurors are creating content on a whole. Now, to a question about adapting to new technology. Why is Small Business afraid of new technology . As well as a lot of other businesses, there are new things that come out with the help of bit and people are leery about doing it, i want to know why. Whats scary . So dan, i would say myself, theres so much coming out of here at once that its hard to know what to choose. So you get in this moment of inertia that you dont choose anything. Putting those two questions together, j. J. It seems theres a good way of aggregating blogs. Yeah, Small Business people, im one myself, you got a business to run. Everything else seems to be answer larry. You got a steep learning curve. Thats a pain. I think part of it on the door step of Technology Manufacturers for not actually making enough products that are easily implementable off the shelf. And some of it has to do just with the nature of a Small Business where youre running around all the time and certain things fall by the wayside. How do you make your choices, adam . I mean, i am sure you get pitched all the time that will help your company. How do you decide which ones to implement . Well, i mean, i guess to sort of answer the initial question and then follow up up on yours, i think Sma