Gamification has emerged as a major trend in digital marketing. Unfortunately, we see a lot of points, badges, and leaderboards that serve no purposes beyond gamification.

Gamification for gamification’s sake is a gimmick. However, when used as a means to an end rather than an end in and of itself, gamification is a powerful tool. Here are three objectives reachable through selective use of gamification:

1. Drive awareness with Facebook’s word-of-mouth channels.

Facebook ushered in the Year of the Verb by introducing its new Timeline and Ticker features. In the past, the only verb available to brands was like. Consumers like fan pages or web content.

Now, brands can use social apps to encourage fans to rate recipes, win prizes, earn badges, and more … and those actions are visible to fans’ friends through the Ticker and Timeline.

(We covered Ticker and Timeline in our 2012 Facebook outlook.)

Plus, good ol’ fashioned sharing of content to the news feed is still viable. Don’t discount the power of ideas. People love to show off content they’ve personally created, especially when they earn points for collecting votes from others!

2. Build affinity through engaging user experiences.

The world is a busy, distracting place. That’s especially true on Facebook where your brand is competing for attention with baby pictures, party invitations, and Farmville. How do you convince consumers to spend time with your brand?

Gamification tactics keep consumers engaged with your brand. A quick example: We developed a gamified social app for Cox Communications that let fans interact with photos of classic cars in exchange for points and chances to win prizes.

The campaign delivered 6+ minutes of engagement per visit! When was the last time a sweepstakes app or television commercial could claim that?

3. Create brand loyalty through rewards programs.

In a recent survey of Facebook users who’d liked a brand, 67% expected to be eligible for exclusive offers. It was the No. 1 reason fans liked a page!

Hey, why fight it? If consumers show their loyalty by liking your brand, reward them by throwing a coupon their way. Just make sure you’re rewarding actual fans and not just feeding coupon clippers and deal seekers.

Points, levels, and leaderboards are all tools for identifying and rewarding your biggest fans. It works in Facebook apps. And it works on content or e-commerce sites using Facebook OAuth. The more fans comment, share, and buy, the better the prizes!

What’s your take? Is gamification a gimmick or a legit marketing tactic?

Now, let’s pull out the crystal ball and peer into Facebook’s future. Here are three developments we expect to see in 2012.

1. Timeline for brands. Perhaps the biggest story for Facebook users in 2011 was the new personal profile layout called Timeline.

When can brand marketers expect their brand pages to mimic personal profiles? Recent history indicates soon. Fan pages lost their tabs within months of personal profiles losing them too. It’s only a matter of time.

As Facebook told Mashable back when Timeline launched: “Consistency in both functionality and appearance is really important to Facebook, so we hope to make Pages more consistent with the new Timeline in the future.”

Here’s our projection of how Facebook Timeline for fan pages might look:

2. The Year of the Verb. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg referred to 2010 as the year of the noun. Brand marketers collected likes around their brand (the noun) by developing basic Facebook contest and sweepstakes apps and spending on ads.

As Zuckerberg says, 2012 will be the year of the verb. You don’t just like Old Navy. You want that sweater. You dont’ just like McDonald’s. You’re eating a Big Mac. We’ve already seen a glimpse of the future with music apps alerting friends that you don’t just like Bon Jovi, you’re listening to Livin’ on a Prayer right now.

In 2012, the pressure will be on marketers to develop social apps that drive verb-based engagement with their brands – on e-commerce sites, on mobile, and on Facebook itself.

3. Facebook as offsite ID. Facebook has worked for years to serve as the driver’s license of the Internet – verifying who you are, unmasking anonymous trolls, and harvesting lots and lots of user data off of Facebook.com.

Facebook OAuth offers a huge opportunity to brands with large content and e-commerce websites. Social apps with gamification functionality (like points, prizes, and leaderboards) can fuel loyalty programs that reward active buyers, commenters, and sharers.

And, of course, those social apps will have to feature the right verbs. In 2012, it won’t be enough to ask visitors to like a blog post or a sweater. Marketers and app developers will have to push visitors to argue with a post’s author, create a custom sweater, and more.

So, what Facebook marketing developments do you expect in 2011? Let us know in the comments!

Here are the three developments we liked most in 2011:

1. Upgrade to Facebook Insights: Facebook has not always met the demands of enterprise-level social marketers, especially with the platform’s analytics package Facebook Insights.

That changed in October when Facebook rolled out a major upgrade to Insights. The update included a beautiful graphical interface, new data for individual posts, and dozens of social data types including People Talking About This, Reach, and Consumption.

More on Facebook Insights

2. New interests targeting ad options. Facebook added two new methods for targeting ads at users based on their interests. Here’s a rundown of your three interests targeting options:

• Precise interests are the likes and interests users have shared in their Facebook profiles. Example: motherhood, soccer mom, being a mom, etc.
• Topics (indicated with a # symbol) combine similar precise interests to enable easier targeting. Example: #mother
• Broad categories combine interests and other profile content into high-level groups for easy targeting. Example: parent (child 4-12)

More on Interests Targeting

3. Sponsored stories. Want more social in your PPC ad campaigns? Sponsored stories put your brand in front of a user’s friends when that user engages with your page, app, place, or website. In other words, they add a little ummph to user endorsements.

There are six types of sponsored stories, each with a unique trigger:

• Page like. A user liked your page at any point in time.
• Page post like. A user liked one of your posts in the last week.
• App used. A user used your app twice or for 10 minutes in the last month.
• App shared. A user shared a story from your app in the last week.
• Check-in. A user checked in or claimed a deal at your place in the last week.
• Domain. A user liked or shared content from your website in the last week.

More on Sponsored Stories

So, what Facebook marketing developments did you like in 2011? Let us know in the comments!

Here are three questions to ask yourself before launching your promotion:

1. Am I seeking virality? If the premise of your promotion is to go viral without an ad budget, step back and assess your campaign. Very little on Facebook is free. Game and application developers like Zynga used to rely on virality. Facebook reigned in their go-to tactics in 2009 to protect the fan experience.

A creative concept and well-built technology can drive huge organic growth. Just don’t expect to spam the news feed and get away with it. Be mindful of the difference.

2. Am I using Facebook functionality? Be careful here! Facebook does not want the legal headaches of its technology facilitating contests and sweepstakes. You cannot require fans to use Facebook functionality other than liking a fan page, checking in to a place, or connecting to an app.

Do not ask fans to post, like or comment on content on your wall or photo albums. Do not use “like” buttons as a voting mechanism. You must run your promotion through a third-party application.

3. Am I collecting contact information? At the end of your campaign, you’ll have to contact your winners to distribute prizes. Remember to collect their contact info in your promotion app, because you cannot contact them using Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles (timelines).

Besides, your Facebook contest is a good opportunity to feed your email marketing program. Be sure to grab those email opt-ins!

Want more information on Facebook contests and sweepstakes? Download our “10 Facebook Promotion Myths” whitepaper.

With Bulbstorm, Cox launched a co-opetition. Wait. Huh? A co-opetition, or cooperative competition, rallies tribes of fans around their favorite products, flavors, or TV shows. Cox’s campaign asked fans to vote for and comment on their favorite shows. The best prizes were reserved for the winning tribes!

In just 10 days, we launched a custom Facebook campaign featuring a fully-branded interface, UGC submission and voting, social leaderboards, daily prize giveaways, and much more. How? Drag-and-drop campaign builder, prebuilt gamification modules, and an awesome team of Bulbers!

Intel launched an idea contest with Bulbstorm. Consumer ideas – complete with photos and video – flowed into the contest app in real time. Fans voted and commented. And Intel observed how product ideas held up to peer scrutiny.

The result? Valuable market research, plus a fan base with ownership stake in a product that would soon hit shelves.

Second, an idea contest where fans shared their dream matchups of current and former WWE stars. Other fans interacted with the user-generated content by voting and commenting. The best matchups rose to the top of social leaderboards. With killer game mechanics and great UGC, the idea contest delivered 7x the page views per visit. Now that’s astounding social engagement!

Gamified character profiles on Facebook – including video, fan voting, and more – provided the foundation for an integrated YouTube and Facebook campaign. Fans not only consumed brand-created content. They also created their own in a Facebook contest asking fans to suggest new characters for the El Montereys universe.

Within a branded app, fans faced the whirlwind of flavor by twisting and contorting their own pics to match the teens in the TV ads. Then, they shared their pics in a Facebook photo contest with voting, prizes, and more.

But, hey, why limit the fun to just Facebook? Instead, Bulbstorm expanded the promotion beyond Facebook. We added a leaderboard of top pics to the brand’s homepage and built a campaign microsite where fans could morph their photos with or without logging into Facebook.

Lower barriers. Greater engagement!