I was hired as a consultant by CCP Games to help refine their approach to social media; the contract ran from January 2010 to February 2011. Google+ hadn’t been released, yet, and the content team had a current editorial plan for the company blogs and YouTube channel, so my focus became Facebook and Twitter.

My directive: Generate traffic to CCP-owned websites, especially the EVE Online website.

My Key Performance Indicators:

• Site Traffic: Looking at the raw amount of traffic that passed from social media into the EVE Online website would give me an indication that the content posted on those platforms was engaging enough to result in an action – a click through to the EVE Online site.
• Source Rank: In addition to traffic, I tracked how each platform compared to all others as a source of traffic. Other sources might include search engines, paid advertising, blogs, news sites and outside message boards. By tracking this, I would be able to tell how important – in terms of traffic – Facebook and Twitter were, when compared to other traffic sources.
• Pages per Visit: It’s one thing to get someone to go to the EVE Online site. If the goal is to have them stay there and engage with our content, though, I needed a way to measure how ’sticky’ that content was. By measuring changes in the pages viewed each time someone visited the EVE Online website, I could get an indication as to whether I was pointing people to good / sticky ports of call.

When my contract with CCP ended in February 2011, these were the results of my efforts:

• Facebook: Traffic had risen so high that Facebook ranked as #3 (up from #46) on the list of traffic sources to the EVE Online website, with visitors viewing 324% more pages per visit than in January 2010. The only sources of traffic that were generating more juice for my client (in terms of traffic) were Google organic search (#1) and direct traffic (#2) from people typing a known EVE Online URL into their browser. For perspective, Facebook was generating more traffic to the EVE Online website than both paid advertising (#5) and referrals from other EVE-related URLs (#4).
• Twitter: Traffic was also up from this source as well, moving Twitter from is previous ranking (#271) to being the #14 generator of traffic to the EVE Online site, with visitors viewing 266% more pages per visit that in January 2010. This change in Twitter traffic was impressive, at it sat just under the traffic generated by the EVE Online newsletter and just above traffic from Bing (organic search) and Yahoo (organic search).

In addition, while my task was not one of customer acquisition, I was also able to track new customers brought in by my direct efforts. In the end, the value of customers generated by those efforts was greater than the cost to the client for my services – meaning my contract, when netting with revenues from acquired customers, had at least a neutral effect on CCP’s balance sheet.

I performed some other tasks before my contract ended, not related to my original mission. What I believe I’ve proven – at least for my client and myself – is that social media can generate a substantial amount of traffic, even to rival sources usually thought of as the defacto kings in this area. I also believe, based on this experience, that while social media is not best suited for customer acquisition, it can certainly help in this regard, even to the point of providing a positive ROI for your social media efforts.

A simple GetGlue summary: You can check into the media you’re consuming; books, movies, music and games. You can even check into ‘ideas’, but that seems a little nebulous and silly, so I’ve not paid any attention to this option. It’s very similar to foursquare, and you can tie both networks together so that you can (for instance) check into New Year’s Eve (on GetGlue) while watching it at your local theater.

This, of course, assumes you still go to the movie theater.

Anyway, I’ve been poking GetGlue for the better part of the last month, trying to see if there is ‘anything there’. At first, I was very frustrated, as the database backing up the service is a little lacking.

Lacking #1: You can check into podcasts, but very few of the shows I listen to are on the list. I’ve submitted Marketing Over Coffee (one of the best marketing shows, period) multiple times, and nothing has happened.

Lacking #2: You can check into games. On the app face, it lists “video games, board games, etc.” Alas, there aren’t anything but computer games. I tried checking into Monopoly (aff) and the only options were computer versions of the game. You don’t have the option of checking into the tabletop version of one of the most well-know board games. Forget about Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: the Gathering, Settlers of Catan, et al. I’ve tried to contact GetGlue numerous times to offer help with their database. Nothing.

That said, there may be a good use for GetGlue, particularly for game publishers. If you’re looking for a game idea, and would like to plug into an entertainment trend, you can check out the Top Trending Shows. When I checked the list, it had The Walking Dead, Dexter, Once Upon a Time, Hell on Wheels, and Homeland as the Top 5. The list changes all the time, depending on the day of the week, but some of the shows float to the top on a regular basis.

The Walking Dead: Zombies – ’nuff said.

Dexter: Crime and murder. Perhaps your game could focus on hiding some behavior that society deems aberrant.

Once Upon a Time: Folklore and faerie tales.

Hell on Wheels: Post Civil War cowboys, perhaps with some alternate history thrown in.

Homeland: Modern investigative drama. More crime (in case your keeping score).

You might find this useful. If so… and you end up making a game because of it… let me know.

With the recent release of Google+ Business Pages come the expected comparisons between Google+ and Facebook. I’ve had my own thoughts about the pages themselves.

Today, someone asked for my personal thoughts as to which is better, Google+ or Facebook.

The answer: It doesn’t matter. The right questions are:

(1) Do any of my current or prospective customers use these services?

(2) If they do, how can I use these services in a unique way to reach them and add value?

What is a vanity URL?

By default, your Facebook page has a URL that looks something like this:
facebook.com/pages/Your-Page/1234567890

A vanity URL looks like this:
facebook.com/Your-Page

Which one do you think looks better?

Watch this video to find out how to grab a vanity URL for your Facebook page.

Direct link to HD version of this video on the Gamerati Facebook page.

Links From Influencers Rock
In the first week, 1,862 unique people visited Loot 2,595 times. Most of these visits came from five sources:

* Direct Traffic (28%): People typing in the URL.

* Gamerati Banner Ads (23%): People clicking on ads I bought on my own advertising network for gaming websites (PDF).

* Facebook (19%): The daily Loot deals get syndicated to the Gamerati Facebook Page. With over 1,100 members, it generates a decent amount of traffic.

* The Geek (8%): I started posting board game deals to Board Game Geek and roleplaying game deals to RPG Geek. This isn’t something I intend to continue (more on that in a future post, perhaps) but it did help get us off the ground.

* Twitter (6%): I post the daily deals to my Twitter account, and numerous other people have been nice enough to retweet those deals. Thanks, by the way – keep it up!

On Monday of this week, I logged into Google Analytics to check on the site traffic and had a present waiting for me. Whereas my best day of Week 1 saw 617 visits, Monday of Week 2 had 1,318 – more than a 100% increase. Clicking on the Traffic Sources link, I saw why… Apparently, we were mentioned on GameSpy.com. A little more investigation led me to this article by Aaron Williams, he of Nodwick fame.

Take a look at Aaron’s article. Notice anything? That’s right, it’s not about Loot. The Loot love is all the way at the bottom, buried in a bunch of other links. And still… It drove a ton of traffic to my site. In fact, of the 4,334 visits to Loot this past week, 1,032 (24%) came from Aaron’s article.

The moral of this story? It’s nice when someone with some juice offers to share it with you.

Yeah. That’s nice. So what does that mean for me!?!
I haven’t spoken with Aaron in over a decade, not since I took the above photo of him at San Diego Comic Con International 2000. I didn’t ask him to talk about Loot, but would have if I’d thought of it. The evidence is clear, though, that people like Aaron can really help you.

So here is my gift for you. Three links:

* RPG Bloggers: If you want to connect with people who write blogs about roleplaying games, this is the place to find them.

* RPG Podcasts: Same for podcasts about roleplaying games.

* Board Game Podcasts: Ditto for podcasts about board games.

You may not be able to count on altruism from your own personal Nodwick link. What you can do, however, is build relationships with those people who do have audiences that read and listen to what they have to say. The bloggers and podcasters on those sites are passionate about games, as are their audiences. Most of them will gladly mention something cool and new that a friend is doing, especially if it’s something their audience might be interested in.

Sow some seeds. Make some new friends.

Oh… and while you’re at it, check out Nodwick and tell Aaron thanks for me.

Lesson 1: Good People Are Gold
The first thing you should know about Loot is that I didn’t do it on my own. I had the help of Josh Dalcher, who I met via his gaming blog. We worked on a couple projects together, during which I came to know him as a competent coder and a professional. Those two skills – competence and professionalism – must go hand in hand when you’re looking for people to work with. They can be the best at what they do, but if you spend more time waiting for things to get done or restating project specs because they don’t know how to follow instructions, you’ll wish you’d never met them. Similarly, the people you work with need a requisite level of skill in order to make the relationship work. In short, I’m lucky to have found Josh. He’s Gold.

Lesson 2: Gamer Like Dice
One of the first tactics I’m testing with Loot is the use of banner advertising. I have two goals here: to test click-thru-rates on my Gamerati Ad Network (PDF) and to learn what types of ads work best. We made three sets of ads. Each set included a leaderboard (728×90), a rectangle (300×250) and a skyscraper (160×600). One set focused on card games, one on board games and one on roleplaying games. After our first week of stats, the results speak for themselves… viewers click on ads that have dice on them. Our best performing advertisement was the RPG rectangle (below), which pulled a 0.48% CTR. But all the ads that had dice did very well, each netting a 0.22% CTR or better.

Lesson 3: You Need A Good Host
In the past, I’ve been a big fan of Go Daddy. They have decent prices and they have 24-hour customer service. However, they proved to be inadequate for me this week. We had our first Loot sale 8 minutes after we went live. Twenty minutes later… the site crashed. During the nearly six hours it was down, I spoke to two customer service reps and one technical specialist. None of them could help me. In veritable despair, I started poking around on my server blindly… and fixed the problem on my own. (NOTE: I know nothing about servers or internet protocols, etc.) The Go Daddy people were cordial and patient (professional), but knew next to nothing about their own product. The fixes they proffered not only didn’t work, but broke some of the other services I had on my server as well (incompetent). Needless to say, I’m looking for a new hosting company as soon as I have the time. I guess you could say that Go Daddy was not Gold.

That wraps up my thoughts on Week 1 of Loot. As I have more thoughts, or learn more lessons, I’ll make sure to let you know about them.

Think Jawbone, but with a video camera attached, able to record up to five hours of video (according to the marketing copy). If the quality is as good as the examples on the Looxcie YouTube channel, this product will be awesome.

I would have killed to have one of these when I was in Iraq. In fact, I tried buying a “spaghetti cam” – like the ones you see in movies – and a solid state hard drive for recording, but the vendor I used never sent the goods. I went on my last tour without my dream – a way to record, hands free.

Where would I like to see Looxcie go from here?

1. Increase the video quality. This is a must, and something I’m sure they’re working on.
   
2. Add a transmitter so that I can send my video feed to a laptop, or even a thumbdrive-like accessory in my pocket, for recording.
   
3. Add streaming, live to the ‘net. This would probably have to start with the secondary step of piping the stream through a laptop, but some day… Some day we’ll be able to stream live from an “ear cam” to uStream, or to a centralized production hub – Live.

I’m excited about what Looxcie represents. I can’t wait to see where this product category goes.

And I’m going to be watching Steve’s blog and Twitter stream more closely, now that I know he’s interested, too. Thanks for the heads up Mr. Garfield.

One of the features I use extensively within Gmail is Groups. By creating these lists within my contacts, I can track who I met at Gnomedex, or who listens to RPG Countdown. I can easily see if someone falls into multiple categories, which helps me when I’m in contact with them. This is important if, like me, you have over 10,000 people in your address book.

The one thing I haven’t had – the one thing I’ve been looking for – is a way to see where my contacts are in my social graph. When I’m talking with a fellow podcaster, it’d be nice to know if they are on Facebook so I can attempt to connect with them there. Until now, I’ve been playing this game by ear, relying on my ability to spot holes in my social graph and plugging them manually.

Today, I found rapportive.

When I open an email from someone, rapportive allows me to see which social networks they participate in. It easily allows me to note if I am connected with them, so that I can take steps to reach out if I am not.

Rapportive isn’t perfect. It relies on plumbing account data based on the addresses in your contact list, so if you don’t have the right email on file you won’t get all the data available on someone. Likewise, if your contact hasn’t maintained their social profiles, the data you get may be out of date. Still, this is a wonderful, and free, tool to help with CRM.

Example URL: http://ephealy.com/sample-blog-post

Let’s say I want to tack on a tracking code for Facebook before feeding it to a Facebook page so that traffic resulting from Facebook can be tracked. Example Facebook URL: http://ephealy.com/sample-blog-post?tid=12345

And let’s say I have a different code for Twitter that I’d like to tack on before bit.ly takes over and the update feeds to a Twitter account. Example Twitter URL: http://ephealy.com/sample-blog-post?tid=67890

Is there a service that can handle this type of thing? I’d love to hear from you, if you know the answer.

There is.

Step #1: Click on the Home Page

Step #2: Hover over the right hand side of one of the updates in your news feed until you see the Hide option

Step #3: Click on on the Hide option and select the option to hide the person whose update you’ve selected

Step #4: Select ‘View Live Feed’ (Upper Left)

Step #5: Select ‘Edit Options’ (Bottom Right, near Footer)

Step #6: In the dialog that pops up, unhide the person you ‘hid’ in Step #3 (above), and then change the number of friends in the bottom left.

That’s it. You’re done.

On yesterday’s Marketing Over Coffee, Chris Penn said he’d been able to look into the developer docs for Wave. What he discovered was that Wave was more than just IM on roids – it’s a federated protocol, apparently using XMPP, that allows for synchronous real-time streaming of information between multiple platforms.

If this is true, then Wave is potentially a game changer, allowing information to not just flow into a conversation, but back out of it to update outside sources; bi-directional exchange. Bi-directional interfacing of services will allow us to break down the silos that keep media channels independent.

Twitter, Today: I post an update and followers A & B see it. If follower A replies, I can see it. If follower B is not following follower A, though, follower B can’t see follower A’s reply to my initial update.

Facebook, Today: I post an update and my friends can see it. If anyone replies to that update, all my friends can see it, regardless of whether they are all friends with each other.

Twitter + Facebook, Today: I can dump my Twitter stream into my Facebook account. This means that my Twitter followers and my Facebook friends can both see my updates. Unfortunately, at this point the conversation fragments. When my Twitter followers reply, my Facebook friends don’t see that side of the conversation. This is true of replies on Facebook as well – they don’t push out to Twitter.

Google Wave and Microblogging: With Wave, if I’m understanding it properly, you can post to Twitter, populate your status updates on Facebook, and any replies from any sources can be seen by all participants in the conversation. It won’t matter where people enter a conversation from, they will all be able to exchange information with each other. Twitter and Facebook, Plurk and Seesmic, it won’t matter which account your using – as long as you’re added to a wave, you’ll be able to participate with individuals on different platforms, using different services.

Conversation portability. Very cool.

UPDATE: I was totally wrong about what Wave is. So what. I want my version!

Bulgaria was an opportunity for me. We had very low expenses while living overseas and so I was blessed with a chance to build my businesses without having to worry about paying too many bills.

In April, I ran across an article by Chris Brogan entitled ‘Social Media for Your Career’. Chris mentioned a lot of things in the article, but I focused on his mention of LinkedIN. Based on his recommendation, I decided to take LinkedIN for a spin (http://www.linkedin.com/in/ephealy).

One thing I noticed was that you can sort potential connections by geographic location. I decided to see how many people were in my neck of the woods: Sofia, Bulgaria. Right now, there are almost 5,000 people in the Sofia metropolitan area with LinkedIN profiles. At the time, though, there were far fewer – 41 to be exact. With so few people to choose from, I decided to scroll through the list and see what popped out.

On the second page was a rather generic listing for ‘CEO of Haemimont Games’. I had no LinkedIN connections who knew this person, so I had no way to contact him via the service, so I relied on another useful service: Google. What I discovered was that Haemimont Games produced some pretty cool products. Even better, their offices were two blocks away. I called, gave them my credentials as a gaming professional, and asked if they’d like to get together. As luck would have it, they were having a company outing at the local bowling alley the next day and asked me to drop by.

As it turned out, Haemimont was looking for people to help write for their first Xbox title. I’d worked on various game products and Rone, my business partner, had sold screenplays to MGM – we had the skills they were looking for, and I told them as much.

The meeting went well, as did the next one. By the end of May, Moonstew Games was knee deep in our first computer game project (to be released this Christmas).

And that’s how social media helped me land my first Xbox gig. Thanks to Chris Brogan (blogger), I learned about a networking site for professionals (LinkedIN), which pointed me toward a potential business partner. Without those two first steps, I would never have met the good folks at Haemimont Games.

Social media won’t do it all, though. It’s great for making connections and sharing ideas, but it took a real-world connection to seal this deal. That’s just as an important a lesson – something I’ve learned time and time again. The internet is great, but it’s no substitute for face-to-face communication. Instant messages and a webcam can’t replace a living, breathing person.

Likewise, nothing replaces experience. If Rone and I didn’t have a resume to back us up, I doubt Haemimont would have given me more than an invite to go bowling again.

Be professional with a solid track record, be prepared to show that record to others, and strike when opportunities arise – you’ll do fine. Social media can help you find those opportunities, though.

For instance, I have a new podcast coming out this week. It’s a show about game design and game mastering, for people who enjoy roleplaying games. I could announce the show at any time, but why not make the announcement at a time when people are most likely talking about RPGs and podcasts already? Furthermore, why not release each episode during that ‘sweet spot’, if one exists?

Let’s see if one does.

Mentions of the terms “rpg” or “roleplaying game” by day of the week:

Fridays are a good day for RPGs – with 20% more chatter than on Thursday. RPG discussion appears to taper off steadily thereafter, with a nice little spike on Wednesdays.

This makes a lot of sense. Most roleplaying happens on the weekends, when people have more free time. If I wanted to give them something to talk about, I might want to do it just before the weekend, so it’s fresh in their minds before they get together with friends or chat about their gaming experiences online.

I looked at what time of day people are talking about RPGs as well. 9 AM and 6 PM PST see definite spikes in RPG conversation. Whatever the reason, those are the times I need to remember when deciding when to talk about my RPG-related news.

Mentions of the terms “podcast” by day of the week:

Unlike RPGs, there doesn’t appear to be a definitive spike in chatty about podcasts on any given day of the week. The weekend is slightly more active, but the percentage of chatty on a day-to-day basis stays pretty consistent.

Likewise, there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference in volume of chat during the day. Podcast discussions seem to be a little more popular in the morning than the evening, but not enough to make any real hard judgments.

The Verdict

I’ve decided that I’ll release my new show on Thursday afternoon. This will give people something to talk about on Friday, and it will be fresh in their minds as they go into the weekend. On Fridays, I’ll post on various forums and news sites about each episode, driving conversation about the show so I can take advantage of the Friday spike.

On the Wednesday before each episode releases, I’ll pre-promote the show on forums in a similar manner, riding the mid-week wave of RPG conversation to remind people that a new episode will be coming out the next day.

Listen the the show and let us know what your thoughts are on the subject.

Last year, SLCN served 8,000 episodes. This year? 2.2 million. And our audience keeps growing and growing. Shows like Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe, Sail On! and Giant Snail Racing consistently pull down more than 20,000 viewers each week. Other shows are also on fire – Meta Makeover and Music Academy OnLive, for instance. SLCN is exploding, and I’m grateful to be a part of the team.

If you’re in Second Life, look me up: Normal Rayna.

If you want to see some of SLCN’s great programming, drop by SLCN.TV and let me know what turns you on.

I set up a MySpace account in a fit of boredom. The service had already been out for some time – long enough to become notorious of the immaturity of the content. But it was also known for being a place for artists to self-promote. That interested me. MySpace was good, allowing me to reconnect with some people I would never have been able to keep track of. It was my at-arms-length social network, though. I’d fire off a friendly message now and again, or post on someone’s page, but I wasn’t too engaged.

When facebook came along, it held no appeal to me. What did I need another MySpace for? I had my answer soon enough as MySpace suffered from security breaches that resulted in tons of annoying spam. It got so bad for me that I signed up at facebook and told all my friends at MySpace that I was shutting down my account. I’ve never gone back, and don’t plan to.

A similar tale can be said for Plaxo and LinedIN, except in this case LinkedIN has proven to be such a valuable service that I have no incentive to migrate to Plaxo. And I’m loathe to maintain multiple account and profiles on networks with duplicate scopes. I’m sorry Plaxo, but LinkedIN is where I’m at, and you’re going to have to work really hard to convince me to give you the time of day.

And so we come to micro-blogging and Twitter. Twitter had me – hook, line and sinker. Like others, though, I’m getting frustrated by the little whale that couldn’t (stay off my screen). I don’t think it’s the outages, though, that are driving people to seriously consider other services. While I have a sizeable cloud of contacts on Twitter, and I like simplicity of the service and the “personal news ticker” feel, it’s just text. Other services, like Jaiku and Pownce, use MMS instead of SMS – making them a little more attractive because of the added functionality. The only things saving Twitter right now are the entrenched user numbers and the fact that the other services don’t (yet) have interfaces that are easy to use.

Take Pownce, for instance. If I had a twhirl for Pownce, I’d be in heaven. Pownce Monkey is OK, but there are many things that need to be tweaked before it’s a truly useful application. If Pownce would implement geo-tracking elements a la BrightKite… Well, let’s just say that I wouldn’t shed a tear for Twitter.