3 Ways World of Warcraft Can Help Social Media & Business Understanding

For roughly 3 years between my sophomore and senior years of high school, World of Warcraft (WoW for short) wasn’t simply a game – it was my life. To help hit this point home, when I quit, my level 70 Dwarf Hunter had about 50 days played on it. That’s 1200 hours of me physically being at the computer (at least I didn’t make myself seem like a total loser </sarcasm>). But, much like Twitter, WoW required some pretty simple, yet demanding things in order to truly succeed.

1. Relationship Building & Networking

Towards the latter end of your leveling days, 70 was the max level at the time, you almost HAD to find a decent group of individuals that you could tolerate, but more importantly could tolerate you. If no one on your server liked you (you were pompous, ridiculous, etc), the ability for you to find this group of individuals (a guild) was slim to none. You needed this group to foster in the ability to raid in the end-game, or basically continue playing after you’ve hit the maximum level. If you weren’t good at networking, you were effectively dust in the wind – even more so if you weren’t good at your role. World of Warcraft has several networking features, including but not limited to:

• Friends Lists – ability to add people you like to a list and see if they are online or offline.
• Groups – ability to get in a small group in order to tackle obstacles you can’t do solo.
• Raids – ability to get in a large group (of up to 40) in order to overcome more difficult obstacles.
• Guilds – ability to be included in a group of individuals that shares a specific chat channel (guild chat), where you can talk, network, plan raids, etc.

Just like in social media, networking is the lifeblood. If you can’t connect, you will fail (or, in the case of WoW, become bored and quit).

2. 7 P’s and Strategy

In the end-game, WoW is very strategy intensive on the occasional raid boss. Some of them require very specific strategy and timing, or else the rate of failure is high. For instance, one boss, Chromaggus in the Molten Core raid instance, required to be tranquilized (or tranq’d) by a hunter, or he would enrage and go into a frenzy, greatly increasing his damage output and putting your chance of survival very low.

This is similar to the social media/business spheres – without strategy, your likelihood of failure is great. This is very much like the 7 P’s – Prior Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. You prepare piss poor, your results are piss poor. It’s as simple as that. If you do plan properly, your guild or business could see success against a raid boss, like these guys:

3. Recruiting & Maintaining Guild Members (or Employees)

In end-game raid situations, the guild/raid leader is effectively the employer, whereas all the guild/raid members are employees. If you do what the raid leader says (assuming they’re not a complete moron), you will achieve GREAT SUCCESS! If not, prepare to do pretty awful. Anyways, in order to constantly see raid progression without significant time sinks and road blocks, a constant flow of new blood is necessary. Employers must look for the next, best, and greatest talent in order to achieve success. If people couldn’t perform their duties well in raids and refused to fix it, they would be replaced by someone more willing to do the work. If you were willing to do the work, you would consistently raid and be rewarded in rare armor, weapons, etc. It’s really a difference between looking like a total bum or looking like you’re the shit (virtually, of course).

Do you want to be a badass, or do you want to be a bum? The choice is yours.

Networking? 3 Things I’ve Learned

Do you network effectively? I know I’m not the best at it, and it’s something I’ve struggled with – but it’s something I’m working on. These are three quick bits I’ve picked up over the last couple months that have been invaluable to me in the quest for an ever-expanding network, to be that one-in-one-thousand that knows more people than any person rightfully should.

1) Don’t sit on the sidelines.
When you’re in a networking situation, don’t stick solely to those you know and feel most comfortable around. I know a lot of people tend to beat this extremely vague and general rule into the ground, but it’s incredibly important and vital that you follow it.

2) Continually open doors for everyone.
One would logically be lead to believe that those you’ve known for a long while would be the most likely to open doors for you. However, in reality this tends to work out in the opposite manner. Those we know the least tend to open the most doors for us. I think this seemingly broken and illogical system can be repaired if you continually find and open doors for old friends and acquaintances alike. Stay frosty and don’t be overcome by the status quo (and it’s so easy to get lazy in the summer).

3) “It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you.”
In any industry, it’s great that you know a lot of people – you can ask favors, yada yada. However, if people know you and recognize you, they are more likely to do business with you. For example, if you were a soccer coach and you had two choices of uniform suppliers for your team – Nike or Diadora – which would you choose? I’m goin’ with Nike. It’s all about brand recognition baby, whether the brand is personal or a company. If people know you and like what you offer, business will be simple.

(obtained via cis.cornell.edu)

Does anyone have anything to add?