What type of gamer are you? If online games are your thing, you probably have the high-tech gadgets that help you immerse yourself into the online world of your choice. Or maybe you like today’s popular gaming systems – the Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PS4 all have a place in your living room. Or you might have a closet full of board games that you pull out with friends and family, trading wood for sheep and getting tickets to ride. Splendor may take up a little space on your shelves if you are this last kind of gamer. It’s a card game all about impressing the right people. And for anyone interested in creating an effective online presence for their business, it’s the place to learn a few lessons about good business.
What is Splendor?
If you aren’t familiar with Splendor by publisher Space Cowboys, it is a deck-building game. That means that as you play, you earn cards and build your deck of cards to achieve specific goals. In the case of Splendor, you are trying to impress a few select noble individuals. You do this by collecting and spending gems.
Splendor players can choose two gems on each of their turns. There are six types of gems (each on its own token) to choose from, and you can then use these gems to purchase cards. Some cards provide points. You earn more gems with others. And some of these cards offer both points and gems. But an essential difference between gems on tokens and gems on cards is that the gems on cards don’t get used up even when you spend them.
For example, let’s say you will purchase a card that costs three diamonds. You have two diamond tokens and one diamond on a card. You can buy that new card and keep the old card to spend on your next turn.
Splendor is a fun and sometimes cutthroat game for people who like strategy. The game is recommended for ages ten and up, and it only takes thirty minutes to play. If you haven’t played it before, you should give it a try. And when you do, you might find that Splendor has more than fun to offer.
Business Lessons We Can Learn from Splendor
Life is full of learning opportunities, and Splendor doesn’t disappoint in that department either. The savvy player and business person can learn some good lessons about their online presence from this fun-filled game.
1. Some Content is More Valuable Than Others
All cards in Splendor can help you achieve worthwhile goals. The goals you want to achieve (i.e., the cards you wish to purchase) require different combinations of gems.
But not all cards in the game are equal. In particular, I’m talking about the gem cards that you can spend over and over again. One diamond token is excellent and may help you purchase a desirable card. But, do you have one diamond on a card? Well, that one can help you buy ten times as many cards. In this case, one diamond is more valuable than another diamond.
Surprisingly, some content on your website is like that. Though you may have two different pages or blog posts that seem very similar, one will continue to bring you benefits while the other is only good for a short time.
The value of some web content does not deplete. Its value doesn’t depend on the season or a specific time frame. Its value doesn’t “expire.” This type of material is called ‘evergreen’ content. Evergreen content is key to your business because it is valuable to your customers over an infinite length of time. It never becomes useless. Content such as product reviews, how-to posts and videos, and list posts can be evergreen provided they are SEO optimized. For the strategic business person, it’s worth taking a little time to think about the content your customers and potential customers will always find of value and make a point to include it on your website and digital presence.
2. Strategizing and Re-evaluating is a Continual Process
I will never forget the very first time that I played Splendor. I was with a couple of dear friends. Well, they were dear to me before we started playing. As we played, the person right before me, again and again, bought the same card I was planning to get the very next turn. Though our friendship may have been on the line because of her fifteen card thefts, that wasn’t my biggest problem at that moment. My problem was that every time she took a turn, I had to reevaluate and strategize again. I had to change my plan.
Business is like this too. Though we do our best to plan and put all our pieces in order, stuff happens. Anything from a new competitor to a pandemic can impact our business plan. And when stuff happens, plenty of times, it complicates or prevents the steps we worked so hard to the layout. But it’s not always negative that can throw a wrench in the works. Sometimes good things disrupt our intentions too. Perhaps you have a product that comes out sooner than you had expected, or you learn something key about your target audience, or you get a great opportunity that you must take now. In these cases and so many more, you may need to reevaluate and strategize sooner than you had originally intended. And that’s not a bad thing. When you maintain an attitude of continual evaluation and tweaking (or even redesigning when necessary), you can take advantage of any opportunity you encounter.
3. Success Takes Time to Achieve
As we have already said, Splendor is a deck-building game. The strategy for these games is knowing when to build your deck of cards and when to use your deck. It is a slow process of getting one card each turn. And like most other deck-building games, it takes some time to collect the cards you need before you can put your whole game-winning strategy into effect.
A digital presence is like that too. We often say that building a successful online or digital presence is a long game. It takes time at the start to lay a foundation on which you can create. Content is king, and building enough content on your site is not an instant process. Building backlinks takes time. Building a reputation on social media takes time. Digital thought leaders say businesses should expect at least six months of focused social media strategy before they can expect to see any return. However, once you have built that foundation, you begin to see the payoff.
For those just embarking on their digital presence, it’s helpful to keep a long-term time frame in mind and not give up when one great joke or viral meme doesn’t bring the payoffs you were expecting.
At Winged Gods Creation, we love games. We love to play them, but we also love to learn from them. Splendor is one game that has good things to offer on both counts. And in case you’re interested, my friend and I are still close despite our semi-heartless game of Splendor. And neither of us happened to win.
What Do You Think?
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One Response
Thanks for the link back to our study on how long it takes to see social media ROI… much appreciated.