4 Reasons Your Company Should Be On Empire Avenue

Running your company is serious business. Empire Avenue is the latest time-wasting game that's the hottest social media darling. So, why would you pay an employee real money to set up your company on Empire Avenue, where it can be sold for play money? Doesn't seem like a good use of someone's time, does it? Yet, I think there are good reasons you might want to consider it.

1. First of all, if you aren't familiar with Empire Avenue, it's part game, part social connecting, part social rating and part content aggregator. You set up your account and people or companies can "buy" stock in you. Your stock price is determined by how many invest in you and what you are doing on all your different social channels (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, your blog, etc). Your share price therefore becomes a Klout-like rating of your social worth, but unlike Klout, it's one you have some control over. A good primer on the subject is the "Empire Avenue: The Next Big Thing in Social Media" article on Smideo

1. Connect with Prospects and Potential Partners. Once you set up your company's account, you can buy shares of other companies and individuals you'd like to get on the radar of. Not only will they get a notice that you bought shares of them, but you can then send them "shout out" messages. Just don't be salesy in your shout outs. Like any social media, create a relationship first. Also, once someone buys your stock, your twitter stream will appear on their home page along with those of the other stocks they've bought.

2. Tell Your Brand Story. It's actually a good way to distribute real world info to your play world investors. One of the first stocks I bought was Ford. Shortly after I did, I got a message from them through my Empire account. It was a message from Ford's head of social media, Scott Monty, which started out, "Today, Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) held an actual shareholder meeting. While we have yet to hold a (e)FORD Shareholder meeting for our Empire Avenue shareholders, we thought we might share what happened at the annual meeting in Wilmington, DE today." It went on to talk about some of the positive outcomes from the meeting and even had links to the proposals shareholders had voted on and another link to their sustainability report. I thought it was a brilliant way to engage their social shareholders in their larger message.

3. Create a Promotion. Empire lets you use shout outs and advertising through it's channels to promote your brand (you). If you're a company, you could use these to create incentives to buy your stock. You could even promote trial of your product by giving coupons for free samples to everyone who buys stock. Or you could create additional word of mouth by offering a promotional item or discount for any shout outs about your brand.

4. Show That You're Social Savvy. As a product, brand or website, you can show where you rank in the social strata by the price you're able to get for your stock. It acts as a sort of Klout score for your brand. In fact, just being on Empire Avenue now as an early adopter shows that you are a forward thinking brand that's aware of social trends.

I'm sure there are other reasons your company should carve out your own piece of Empire Avenue. Not the least of which, is that its just kind of a fun thing to do. Have you tried it yet? What other things have you have seen brands doing there? What other reasons do you see for a company to join in? Or for that matter, why should they stay away? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Mike McClure – For sale at Empire stock symbol mikekmcclure, ECD at The Yaffe Group (eStock symbol TYG)