If you love gaming as much as I do, then you’re probably looking for ways to justify your time dedicated to pillaging villages and completing epic quests. Well fear not, my game loving friends, there actually happen to be extremely beneficial lessons to be learned from the online realms of adventure.

The spirit behind most multiplayer online games is in community. The more you interact with each other, the richer your experience with the game is. Through my time spent in these alternate worlds, I’ve discovered a few key correlations that can be applied to the business world. So if you’re ready to level up your Intelligence, read on…

Lesson #1: Be Where The People Are
Often times in games you need the help of others for a variety of reasons. You might need an item they have, help finishing a quest, or guidance in finding a particular location. In all these instances, you have a greater chance of connecting with someone who can help if you are in one of the major cities, simply because that’s where the greatest number of people are. In real life, when you want to make connections with like-minded individuals, you need to be where they are. In the social media realm, those “cities” are places like Twitter or Facebook. Where are your people? Do some research and find out where your peers and customers are. That’s where you need to be making connections.

Lesson #2: Have a Quest or Mission Others Can Get Behind
Once you’ve found where you should be most visible, you need to give people a reason to befriend you. In gaming, it’s usually an invitation to join in a battle to the death over the destiny of the online world. In real life, your mission may not be quite as epic, but it should still be something that inspires and motivates. What is your quest? What is it that you are trying to achieve? Use that as your base and find creative ways to spread your message so you’ll pick up helpers and followers.

Lesson #3: Reward People for Networking with You
Loot is a powerful motivator in online games. Everyone wants their just rewards for helping out. In real life, it’s not much different. People want to know that you appreciate their efforts and gifts of time. Make sure to leave no doubt of your gratitude. The more you can give back and reward contributors, the closer your connection will be with them. They’ll also consider you a valuable ally for future business adventures.

Lesson #4: Keep In Frequent Contact
When you’re faced with the possibility of connecting with over eleven million players, it’s easy to forget about someone. If you’ve made a valuable connection, keep the momentum going with frequent communication. Drop a line to see how they are doing, take them out to lunch, or connect with a quick chat or message via Twitter or Facebook. If you stay on a person’s radar, you’ll never be far from their mind.

Lesson #5: Join or Create a Guild (Tribe)
When you find people you want to connect with on a daily basis, or when you’re looking for a group to help you level up and complete quests, you usually join a guild. The guild then becomes your online family, the place you go for help and friendly banter. In the real world, finding a like-minded group or tribe is essential to growing and getting support in your field of choice. Now that online communities are so prevalent, it’s even easier to find a group willing to accept you into their fold. With the right group, you’ll find an amazing support system ready and able to help you achieve your goals of a true epic destiny.

While the online world is a great break from the stresses of your daily life, nothing quite compares to the feeling of real life achievement. If you use these tips, you may find the adventure of your real life even more rewarding then your latest online achievement.

Do you have a passion for gaming? In what ways has gaming helped or hindered your business goals?

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Unless you’ve been under a rock these past few years, you probably know about Facebook. If it’s a tool you’ve overlooked in your marketing efforts, you might want to reconsider. Its 500+ million active users share more than 30 billion pieces of content each month. In fact, the average Facebook user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events. If you want to be where the people are, then you need to know how to leverage Facebook to find potential clients, connections and sales.

There are two ways to use Facebook to promote your business – via your own personal account and through Facebook’s Pages feature. In this lesson, I’m going to talk about marketing via your own personal account. I’ll address how to use Facebook Pages in an upcoming post in this series.

When you start to think of Facebook as a business tool, the question of privacy and how much to share with work and personal contacts can become a concern. Most people don’t want to let their boss or clients know “exactly” what they did over the weekend. Lucky for us, Facebook has set up a great way to control exactly what your connections see. You can control just about anything, so you can feel comfortable and secure using your Facebook account as a medium for business, while still saying your hellos to Mom.

Getting this kind of security is achieved through a feature called “lists.” This feature allows you to create lists, similar to Twitter, that you can add your friends to. Then you can go through and create privacy setting based on these lists that will determine who can see what. To get started, use this simple tutorial as a guide.

STEP ONE: Set Up Your Lists

1. Click the Account link on the top right of page. A drop down menu will appear. From there, click the “Edit Friends” link.

2. On the left side of this page you’ll see a list of links. Under the Lists heading, click the “Friends” link.

3. A list of all of your friends will now appear. At the top of this list will be a button that says “Create New List.” Click this to begin creating a new list. These lists allow you to separate your friends and family from work or professional contacts.

4. Once the lists are created, add your contacts to the appropriate list. I like to make sure I keep everyone in just one list so I don’t accidentally expose someone to content I don’t want them to see.

1. Click the Account link on the top right of page. A drop down menu will appear. From click the “Privacy Settings” link.

2. At the bottom of the chart there is a link that says “Customize Settings.” Click this to personalize your settings.

3. You’ll find three areas where you can customize your settings. The first is controlling who sees what you are sharing. The second determines who sees what other people post on your wall or about you. The third handles your contact information. Go through and create your settings. If you want to exclude a list from seeing something, click on the Customize link. Begin typing who you wish to exclude in the “Hide this from” section. You can exclude multiple lists using this feature.

Sometimes you want to post something that is outside your created settings. You can do this with the privacy feature when you post your status updates. Next to the Share button is a lock icon. Click this and you will see a drop down menu. Click on “Customize” to set who you want to exclude your status update from. Just like in the privacy settings, you can also exclude by list.

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Twitter has changed the way we communicate 140 characters at a time. If you run a business, especially an online one, making the most of Twitter is something you do not want to overlook when putting together a marketing and promotion plan. The benefits of the platform are numerous and it’s something even the most novice computer user can use. In the spirit of making the most of Twitter, I’ve scoured the web for some of the best tutorials, advice and how-tos related to the social media site. Below, you’ll find tips for getting started, figuring our what to write, and finally some power user tips.

Getting Started

How To Create A Custom Twitter Background
As a marketer, you should never miss an opportunity for branding. Twitter is no exception. This guide will show you how to make and upload your custom Twitter background. Custom Twitter backgrounds are also a service I provide, if you desire someone else to create yours for you.

Writing Your Twitter Bio
Your bio is a key element to getting more followers. It explains what you’re doing and what type of person you are in a very brief and concise format.

How To Create a Twitter List
This guide is an older primer, but it’s still filled with great tips and advice on how to make the most of Twitter lists.

What To Write

50 Ways to Tweet
If you don’t know where to start, or what you should be tweeting, check out this guide first. It’s a huge reference that will spark your creativity and will give you quite a few great ideas.

Get More Twitter Followers
This is Chris Brogan’s short and sweet guide to getting more followers. It’s basic Twitter etiquette that makes an excellent primer for making the most of the platform.

Modeling Other Successful Twitter Users
They say imitation is the best form of flattery. Use these tips to make the most of Twitter by following the most successful Twitter users.

10 Traits of Highly Effective Twitter Users
More of a how-to-tweet guide than anything, these tips are perfect for getting your feet wet when you start tweeting.

Power Users

Search Twitter
Want to keep track of what’s trending? Need to find people in your niche or genre? Turn to the Twitter search.

Guide To Twitter Hashtags
Hashtags are tags that you can search by to find specific topics, groups or events, such as #quotes or #comiccon. This guide gives the breakdown on how to use them and some great 3rd party tools for finding hashtags.

Get More Twitter Followers
This is a creative list of ideas for getting more Twitter followers. Some of the ideas do not condone true relationship marketing, and you should always determine what your goal is in getting more followers before following any tips of this nature. Do you want to engage in real conversation and use your follower base as a true tool, or do you just want a high number of people who may or may not be interested in what you have to say?

TweetDeck
This application lets you Tweet from multiple accounts (including other social platforms), set up notifications and much more, all from one central location.

SocialOomph.com
Are you going to be away for a few days and don’t want to lose momentum? Using Socialoomph.com you can schedule your Tweets to be posted at specific times.

These are a few of my favorite resources. Help expand on this list and share yours!

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