Wikipedia sums up gamification with the following definition:
Gamification is the use of game thinking and game mechanics in a non-game context in order to engage users and solve problems.

For many, gamification is a tool for brands to engage with customers. However there are many other instance where gamification has been employed – internal comms and public health spring to mind.

Tonight’s CommsChat welcomes Speed Communications’ director, John Brown (tweeting as @brownbare) our expert guest on gamification.

Tonight’s topics will cover,

• What role can gamification play in communications?
• What are the key ingredients in getting gamification right?
• Any great gamification campaigns?
• Is gamification a fancy way of putting lipstick on a pig?
• What role does feedback play in gamification?

Join us! We tweet from @CommsChat and #CommsChat takes place from 8-9pm UK time – for worldwide times, go here. Anyone can take part in the discussion – simply follow the hashtag here or on Twitter. If you can’t make the chat or would like to revisit it, a transcript will go up on Tuesday morning.

We’d love to hear your suggestions for future topics for #CommsChat – get in touch with Brittany by email or Twitter if you’ve got ideas.

For our first #CommsChat of 2013, rather than predict comms trends for the year ahead, we’re going to skip a decade. Stephen Davies, the digital comms practitioner, blogger, biohacker, and senior consultant at 33 Digital, recently presented his series of predictions for what PR will look like in 2023.

You can read Stephen’s entire set of predictions here – and might want to before Monday’s chat. We’ll be using his predictions as a jumping off point for our conversation on Monday night.

Topics will include:

• Just how powerful will mobile computing and mobile communication be in ten years time? Can Moore’s Law continue to function?
• Davies predicts that data will be at the heart of every comms campaign in 2023. Are any brands or businesses already prioritising data?
• Will there be an issue with data-driven politics that it interferes with individual privacy?
• One prediction is that multi-discipline comms will be crucial, particularly for businesses wishing to operate socially. Will this be the end of single-discipline/channel agencies?
• Can or should anything be done to stop the rise of hacktivism?

Join us! We tweet from @CommsChat and Stephen will be tweeting from @stedavies. #CommsChat takes place from 8-9pm UK time – for worldwide times, go here. Anyone can take part in the discussion – simply follow the hashtag here or on Twitter. If you can’t make the chat or would like to revisit it, a transcript will go up on Tuesday morning.

We’d love to hear your suggestions for future topics for #CommsChat – get in touch with Molly by email or Twitter if you’ve got ideas.

We’re delighted to welcome Jonathan Allen, the director of Search Engine Watch, for tonight’s #CommsChat. For the last chat of 2012, we’re going to discuss search, digital marketing, and social.

Topics up for discussion tonight will include:

• How has the digital marketing industry changed in 2012?
• How can you create great content to drive your SEO?
• What is the best thing a small company can do to improve its digital marketing?
• Should we treat social media marketing differently to digital?
• Are we paying enough attention to mobile?

Join us! #CommsChat takes place from 8-9pm UK time – for worldwide times, go here. Anyone can take part in the discussion – simply follow the hashtag here or on Twitter. If you can’t make the chat or would like to revisit it, a transcript will go up on Tuesday morning.

We’d love to hear your suggestions for future topics for #CommsChat – get in touch with Molly by email or Twitter if you’ve got ideas.

Search Engine Watch is hosting SES London in March 2013, along with ClickZ, a three-day conference on digital. Early registration is available until 21 Dec – go here for details.

For Monday’s #CommsChat, we’re pleased to welcome Kate Joseph, insight research analyst at Rufus Leonard, for a session on trust. The agency recently carried out some research into trust among consumers; Communicate is exclusively launching the results of that research in its November/December issue.

Over the past five years, customer perception of the financial services industry and utilities sector has decreased while other consumer-facing industries have improved. Just 3% of consumers would trust advice directly from a company. But what can industries do to restore trust and reputation?

Topics up for discussion on 10 December will include:

• Why are public trust and customer service so closely linked?
• Why has there been such a drastic downturn in the perception of financial institutions and utility companies?
• Does a loss in reputation in certain industries lead to a simultaneous increase in others?
• How does the lack of trust in advice directly from a corporation affect communications professionals and marketers in that industry?
• What does it take to build trust in the financial and utilities sectors? To maintain it?
• What role can communicators play in maintaining corporate reputation?

Join us on Monday evening. Anyone can take part in the discussion – simply follow the hashtag here or on Twitter. If you can’t make the chat or would like to revisit it, a transcript will go up on Tuesday morning.

We’d love to hear your suggestions for future topics for #CommsChat – get in touch with Molly by email or Twitter if you’ve got ideas.

Tonight on #CommsChat, we’re delighted to welcome Rob Bonn from Seven as our guest. Seven recently took home the Grand Prix, as well as two other awards, at the International Content Marketing Association Awards; fittingly, tonight we’re going to be discussing content marketing.

Content marketing agencies produce content for client brands across multiple channels and in multiple sectors. Tonight, we’ll hear from Rob some more of the specifics about how the industry functions and where it might go in the future.

Topics up for discussion this evening include:

• Has content marketing increased in prominence in recent years?
• Is content marketing mainly useful for internal audiences?
• What sectors have led the way in terms of adopting content marketing?
• What do you think of comparisons between content marketing and “brand journalism”?
• What does the future look like for this industry?

Join us this evening. Anyone can take part in the discussion – simply follow the hashtag here or on Twitter. If you can’t make the chat or would like to revisit it, a transcript will go up on Tuesday morning.

We’d love to hear your suggestions for future topics for #CommsChat – get in touch with Molly by email or Twitter if you’ve got ideas.

On #CommsChat this week, we discussed recent upheavals at the BBC, taking in editorial cuts, resignations, best practice, and the thorny subject of libel and media training. Below is a full transcript, but we’ve pulled out some tweets which caught our eye during the hour.

• @AdamRubins the BBC is a stale old wounded corporate beast that’s been mis-managed for years. The problems are deep rooted #commschat
• @AllThingsIC  PCC: You should be told about it on day 1 in your newsroom & uphold the responsibility. Never hurts to update best practice #commschat
• @ColinKelly wouldn’t take much for Twitter to have a prominent ‘legal’ Page with trusted info. Social Ntwrks could help educate. #commschat
• @jgombita frankly, the mainstream media don’t want to hear from agency people in a crisis. They want TOP in-house people. #commschat
• @RobertCGage Good grief, YES! Used professionally, social media is not a harmless toy. Used personally it isn’t either #commschat

According to significant sections of the British media, the BBC is in a period of crisis that threatens to engulf the broadcaster. But when we unpack the various strands of the “crisis”, what implications could this have for the media industry and those who specialise in public relations?

We’ll be discussing this topic from 8pm on Monday 19 November. Topics will include:

• Jeremy Paxman warned in 2007 that editorial cuts at the BBC were making Newsnight “unsustainable”. Has this prediction been borne out?
• Should the PCC code of best practice for journalists be enforced or updated?
• What PR advice would you have given to the BBC?
• Does the media risk over-estimating public interest in stories such as this?
• Should companies whose employees use social media educate them about libel and its potential repercussions?

Join us this evening. Anyone can take part in the discussion – simply follow the hashtag here or on Twitter. If you can’t make the chat or would like to revisit it, a transcript will go up on Tuesday morning.

We’d love to hear your suggestions for future topics for #CommsChat – get in touch with Molly by email or Twitter if you’ve got ideas.

Tonight on #CommsChat, we’ll be joined by Kerry O’Callaghan, vice-president Global Brand Communications at GlaxoSmithKline. Ahead of Kerry’s panel at Communicate magazine’s Learning from the legacy: Comms Lessons from the London 2012 Olympics, she’ll be discussing issues connected to internal communications strategies for major events – drawing, of course, on GSK’s recent successful sponsorship of the Games.

Kerry will be tweeting from the @GSK account this evening from 8-9pm. It should be a very interesting discussion – we look forward to hearing your views!

Topics will include:

• Can an internal comms strategy be one-size-fits-all?
• Why is it important for a company to maintain a level of engagement with its employees?
• Should HR teams also be involved in internal comms?
• What impact do high-profile company activities like rebrands or event sponsorships have on internal comms?
• How did companies engage with internal audiences during the Olympics?
• What are reliable methods of measurement for internal comms success?

#CommsChat takes place from 8-9pm (UK time) every Monday evening (with the odd exception). Remember to sign up to our mailing list or follow @CommsChat for regular updates.

Anyone can take part in the discussion – simply follow the hashtag here or on Twitter. If you can’t make the chat or would like to revisit it, a transcript will go up on Tuesday morning.

We’d love to hear your suggestions for future topics for #CommsChat – get in touch with Molly by email or Twitter if you’ve got ideas.

And if you’d like to see Kerry talking in greater detail, along with a host of other brilliant speakers, tickets are still available for Learning from the legacy. Book here or contact Hannah Hodges for passes.

Tonight on #CommsChat, we’re going to be discussing the new wave of tablet computers and what they mean for professional communicators.

Is pen and paper now completely obsolete? Are tablets replacing laptops? Is hybrid computing the way forward? Tablets may have seemed like the stuff of sci-fi for many years – but Apple has now sold 100 million iPads, and there are equivalent devices, both maxi and mini, carving out footholds in the market.

Topics up for discussion tonight will include:

• What does increased competition in the tablet industry mean for app producers, designers, social experts and others?
• Has the market reached saturation point?
• How are tablets superior to laptops and desktops for comms professionals?
• Does tethered computing have a future?
• Surveys have shown that click-through rates on tablet advertising is significantly higher than on mobile. Is this still a valid way of measuring engagement?

#CommsChat takes place from 8-9pm (UK time) every Monday evening (with the odd exception).

Anyone can take part in the discussion – simply follow the hashtag here or on Twitter. If you can’t make the chat or would like to revisit it, a transcript will go up on Tuesday morning.

We’d love to hear your suggestions for future topics for #CommsChat – get in touch with Molly by email or Twitter if you’ve got ideas.

Tonight on #CommsChat, we’ll be running a slightly more low-key chat than this lunchtime’s conversation. In the wake of the Digital Impact Awards, we’re taking excellence in digital communications, and more broadly awards in the comms industry, as our topic.

We don’t have a specific “guest Twitterer” tonight, but are looking forward to hearing from some owners of the coveted Digital Impact Awards trophies. As ever, everyone is encouraged to join in and engage in the conversation.

Topics for this evening:

• Is digital now the most important channel for communication?
• How important is it to identify your audience before embarking on a digital strategy?
• What’s the best way of measuring digital ROI?
• Are industry accolades such as awards useful?
• Is there still room for the social media agency?

#CommsChat takes place from 8-9pm (UK time) every Monday evening (with the odd exception).

Anyone can take part in the discussion – simply follow the hashtag here or on Twitter. If you can’t make the chat or would like to revisit it, a transcript will go up on Tuesday morning.

We’d love to hear your suggestions for future topics for #CommsChat – get in touch with Molly by email or Twitter if you’ve got ideas.