No blogging required.
For the first time in 7 years, my annual guest blogging contest has been gamified, thanks to our Chrome sponsor Captain Up.
What does it mean that the 7JGBC has been gamified?
With the publication of the first guest post on Thursday August 1st, until the end of the 7th Annual JobMob Guest Blogging Contest – the 7JGBC – on September 24th October 17th, any visitor to JobMob during the 7-week contest time frame will earn points and badges.
For every article you visit, for every comment you make, for every social media share and more, you will earn points and badges and everything will be tracked via the Leaderboard.
How do you play?
Very simple.
Visit any page on JobMob and you'll see the Captain Up dashboard widget (pictured here at right) floating in the lower righthand corner of your browser window (desktop browsers only, for now).
Click ‘Sign in to Play' and the Start Your Adventure window will appear, where you can sign in with your Twitter or Facebook account. A few more clicks, and you'll have already earned your first points and badges.
Why should you play?
Fun and prizes.
The top 3 point-getters in the leaderboard – not including ‘Jacob Share' – at the end of the contest, who have also earned certain special contest badges, will all win prizes:
- The top point-getter, the person at the top of the leaderboard, will win $150, sponsored by MyBlogGuest
- The second top point-getter at the top of the leaderboard that day will win $100, sponsored by MyBlogGuest
- The third top point-getter at the top of the leaderboard that day will win $50, sponsored by H.T. Prof Executive Search
Once you get into the game, you'll see that it's tough to not check the Leaderboard regularly to see how you're doing compared to the other players.
How do you earn points and badges?
You'll earn points for almost anything you do on JobMob throughout the contest:
- Visiting the site
- Commenting on articles
- Retweeting articles
- Liking articles
- +1'ing articles
- Watching YouTube clips
- Liking the JobMob Facebook page
There are over 60 different badges to be earned and more will be added during the contest.
Some are easy and some are hard. To get an idea of what's required to win any given badge, click the gray person icon (beneath the globe icon) in the game widget, click the Badges tab in the popup window that appears, then click on any badge for more information about it.
What are the ‘certain special contest badges' needed to qualify for prizes?
Every guest post in the 7JGBC has its own unique badge, awarded for visiting that guest post.
In order to qualify for the the prizes, assuming you're one of the top 3 point-getters, you must have earned all the guest post badges i.e. you must have visited all the guest post entries.
That's it! Click ‘Sign in to Play' and join in the game asap.
Questions?
Ask them in the comments, but join the game first so you can earn points with your questions 🙂
This article is part of the The $10000 7th Annual JobMob Guest Blogging Contest.
Hey! Can I enter even if I have a guest post in the contest? It’s a neat little app I want to practice using.
Kate- absolutely! Anyone can play the game- visitor, contestant or sponsor.
Good to know. Thanks, Jacob. I replied to get more points 😉
I’m afraid the Captain Up app isn’t working. I’ve never gotten any points for the videos I’ve watched and the sharing via twitter and facebook points aren’t consistently logged either. Again, this just seems to cop out every once in a while, like unreliable power.
Kate- regarding the video problems, can you give me a specific example that I can relay to the Captain Up team? For the twitter/facebook, can you confirm that you were sharing via the sidebar on the page?
I just noticed that the contest within a contest finished on 24 September…unless it has been extended to the end of Guest Blogging Competition?
Just updated the post with the new, final deadline of October 17th
OK, I’ve been having a lot of fun with this. Likes, Tweets and Comments count for points, but watching videos doesn’t get counted. It is actually a lot of work, but interesting how it becomes meditative after a while. I’m looking for other examples of where Captain Up is being used now.
Oh look! They’ve got another game on their blog.
http://captainup.com/blog/
I’m totally addicted to Captain Up now. It’s completely taking my focus off Candy Crush.
As everyone in the world knows, or all JobMobbers know, I have been playing with the Captain Up engine rather seriously. I no longer play Candy Crush or visit Facebook quite so often as I did before. I’m having trouble figuring out why some badges are rewarded when they say and why others aren’t. Also, some activities count while others don’t at all and some work inconsistently. I can only find one video on site, for example, that rewards people for watching. +1s seem to count for some users and don’t register for others. Now, it is just a game, but there are a lot of behavioural economics at play here so if I had a client I wanted to recommend this tool to, I couldn’t do it until it was perfected.
Not that I want to brag or anything, but I am fewer than 4000 points from reaching a level NO ONE has reached before.
This part of your post is going to be a problem:
“What are the ‘certain special contest badges’ needed to qualify for prizes?
“Every guest post in the 7JGBC has its own unique badge, awarded for visiting that guest post.
“In order to qualify for the the prizes, assuming you’re one of the top 3 point-getters, you must have earned all the guest post badges i.e. you must have visited all the guest post entries.
“That’s it! Click ‘Sign in to Play’ and join in the game asap.”
I am one of the top three point getters and I have visited all of the guest posts as is evidenced by the comments and tweets I have made for each of the guest posts. Unfortunately, I have not been able to “unlock” those badges and I am not sure why.
Kate- if you check your Badges Showcase (e.g. by clicking on your contest avatar in the Activity Feed in the JobMob sidebar, you’ll see that you have in fact achieved most if not all those badges.
Thanks Jacob, that is exactly what I did! It shows that I am missing badges for guest post #5, #11 and #15. Repeated visits to those posts doesn’t unlock them.
Jacob,
I also checked your badges and you are also missing 5, 11 and 15. It is absolutely impossible that you haven’t earned them too because you tweet, like and +1 each post.
Only Rocky has those badges “earned.” It’s all a bit strange.
It must have been a temporary glitch because both you and I have all those badges at this moment, according to the Badges Showcase
If you go to the game center, click on badges and then “missing”, you will see that both of us are missing those guest posts.
Ah, the penny just dropped! Jacob, you’re looking in the badges showcase, but only the badges that say “earned” across the top have been won. The “unearned” badges still appear without the green stripe. You still have three unearned guest post badges too.
This is a great idea for a tool, but there are obviously quite a few little glitches and hacks unscrupulous users can exploit.
So, it’s October 20th. Is the contest within a contest over yet?
Pingback: The Dramatic End To The 7th Annual JobMob Guest Blogging Contest | JobMob