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Gaming… It’s a mega industry worth $20 billion and rising – jam packed with opportunities for developers and entrepreneurs. But finding that next ‘cool’ thing can be an overwhelming mission even for the most creative mind. One entrepreneur has journeyed away from the mainstream, meeting that challenge head on and creating a new niche known as “social gaming.” Here’s more from Stephanie Stewart on her start-up WISEOZ:

Please tell us about your start-up WISEOZ. What makes it unique? And how does it fit into the marketplace?

SS: WISEOZ.com is an innovative, unique and rewarding take on online social communities that launched April 2008. It is a teaming-inspired, contest-based and interest-oriented community where people compete, collaborate, socialize and connect through custom moderated play-as-you-please games called “WiseWits” and interest-based social groups called “Circles of Interest”.

The competitive, unique and rewarding nature of WiseWits are what distinguishes WISEOZ from other social game communities. They’ve been described as The Rat Race meets The Da Vinci Code. WiseWits require an individual, or team, to apply experience, creativity and know-how to solve clues (in the form of puzzles, image/video hunts, trivia, teasers, creative tasks and riddles) by seeking out information or performing certain tasks. Additionally, people make social connections with like individuals through well over 100 different organized and moderated Circles of Interest.

Wisewits are actually intended to be sponsored by and themed for companies, products and brands as part of an immersive marketing strategy that educates consumers while building buzz. We believe that the best relationships are built on good times and positive experiences. People relate to one another best when they experience fun and rewarding play together. The same can be said for how companies, products and brands relate to their audience and their audience relates to them. With that in mind, WISEOZ offers unique and practical ways for sponsors to personalize their relationship with their audience through witty, challenging and rewarding fun that promotes good times and positive experiences. Ultimately, it’s a win-win concept that rewards consumers and benefits sponsors.

How do you promote a business such as this?

SS: With no funding to speak of, WISEOZ has a little-to-no marketing budget. Ultimately, our members and word-of-mouth are the best form of advertising, but even with a good helping of fanatics and evangelists, that can only go so far. That being said, we’ve really had to get creative. Here are some of the things we’ve done for little to no cost that have helped us to find new members.

1. Twitter, MySpace and Facebook oh my! WISEOZ has accounts on several of the big hitting social community sites and we do what we can to push our content out to those sites as frequent as possible. Every time we release a new clue or award a winner, we Twitter. Every time we publish a new WiseWit, we blog and bulletin it to MySpace and Facebook and dig it to Digg. Additionally, we have a SHARE feature on our WiseWit pages that easily allows users to do the same. We’ve gotten many new members from this approach and it keeps the viral engine running.
2. Cozy up to your specialty! Aside from maintaining an active presence in the heavy hitting social communities, we’ve also discovered several sites that fit well with our site in that they aggregate our type of content. For example, we list every WiseWit with Sweepstakes.com and enjoy a healthy bit of traffic from them.
3. WiseWits … the thinking man’s sport and the marketeer’s tool. We’ve used many of our WiseWits very purposefully to generate new membership for our site. In fact, this is the nature of WiseWits as a social media tool. Some great examples are Wii KILLED THE VIDEO STAR where one member paints the roof of her barn (she lives in Fort Knox airspace!) with the WISEOZ logo as a viral stunt and BADA BINGO where members are trying to recruit new members in order to fill in their BADA BINGO card.
4. Support your customers in doing what they do best! We were in our chat room one day when we discovered that one of our users is a Rubik’s cube whiz (one of those under-a-minute guys). He actively posts videos of himself solving Rubik’s cubes to YouTube. We jumped on the opportunity to sponsor his habit by providing a custom WISEOZ Rubik’s cube (which is now a hot selling item in our store, WISE SHOP) and a WISEOZ t-shirt. He now performs with his WISEOZ gear while consistently plugging our site. Several new members found us through his YouTube videos.
5. To theme is to target! Every WiseWit is a custom creation and we try to theme them such that we can approach the right bloggers, enthusiasts and sponsors. For instance, we recently ran a WiseWit called I’M NOT AMUSED which was all about amusement parks and roller coasters.
6. Attack of the bloggers! A wise social marketing blogger directed us towards the concept of writing expert articles for publication to blogs. A few months ago we wrote, “What I Learned In the First 90 Days Of The Social Community Space That I Must Be Stupid Enough To Share” which made its way into at least two social marketing blogs.
7. Seek out reviews and awards! Every chance we get we approach game review sites for write-ups or enter WISEOZ into awards. Most recently, we generated bunches of traffic from our nomination in The 2nd Annual Open Web Awards that Mashable puts on (we were top 10 in the Online Games category).
8. Worth the widget! We’ve used WidgetBox to create embeddable widgets for our users to display on their Web sites and blogs. Additionally, those same widgets are being used as applications on Facebook.

What is a ’social game community’?

SS: We actually may be coining this term now. Interestingly enough, Google it and you only get about 100-something hits, of which several are linked to our discussions of WISEOZ. A social game community is a gathering of people that come together to play games in a community-style setting. In some cases, they are competing against one another. In other cases, they may be competing as teams or as a community as a whole. Regardless, it is this community-style setting that encourages both competition and camaraderie among players.

Did you write a business plan? How did you fund the launch of your business? Are you currently seeking investment?

SS: We have a beautifully crafted 40-something page business plan to wow investors. We are actively seeking investors but have not found any yet. The launch of WISEOZ up to this point has been entirely funded from our own pockets.

Is this your first start-up venture? What other businesses have you been involved with?

SS: WISEOZ is indeed my first start-up. It’s my baby! I do have several other projects in some state of starting up including iThinkWorks and BusinessHelpingBusiness.com. iThinkWorks is a Web solutions company that identifies and develops products and services focused in and around the social Web experience and online communities with security, affordability, collaboration and maintainability in mind. BusinessHelpingBusiness.com is our latest creation. It is a free business resource for businesses to help other businesses to survive and succeed by making needs known and favors available.

What resources have you utilized for start-up assistance and advice (both on and offline)?

SS: Aside from the local book store and our personal contacts, we’ve made use of blogs (Seth Godin, Brad Feld), Web sites (Hubspot.com, SmallBusinessOnlineCommunity.com) and WebEx’s (Forum One Networks, Tech Republic). We were also able to make use of conferences from Florida Venture Forum and Tampa Bay Technology Forum.

If you had to start all over again, what are some things you would do differently?

SS: Where do I start? Most of what comes to mind is captured in the article I wrote “What I Learned In the First 90 Days Of The Social Community Space That I Must Be Stupid Enough To Share“. The easy answer is that I wouldn’t necessarily do anything differently. All the experiences I encountered along the way and all the decisions I made (right or wrong) have truly shaped me as an entrepreneur.

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