Started in February 2010, Empire Avenue (EA) is fast becoming a popular new tool for brands and social media marketers. Readers who have yet to caught up with this Canadian-based social stock market-like game phenomenon or have absolutely no clues on what it does and how it works, get up to speed with my Executive Summary.

EA is not exactly the easiest game to understand and there wasn’t much explanation available on the website for newbies. I have made a couple of rookie mistakes which took me a while to recover. This post is all about helping you avoid the 5 most common mistakes when you first start out on EA.

1. Avoid Inconsistent Branding

EA works like your regular Stock Exchange where brands and individual list themselves as stock profiles. Other users (Investors) invest by buying shares using virtual money called ‘eaves’.

When you create your EA profile, it is important to make sure that your profile name, photo and bio is consistent with the rest of your social media connections. This help your existing fans and followers to identify your EA account easily and start their investment early.

2. Avoid Listing Weak Connections

EA will prompt you to link up existing social connections such as Twitter, Facebook, Blog, YouTube, LinkedIn, Foursquare etc when you create your account. Your first initial share value is determined by a combination of your social connections, activities as well as demand for your initial shares.

You should try to list all your active connections to enhance your initial share value and to showcase your capital growth potential to investors. Savvy investors usually reserve their eaves for profiles that own blog content and command more than 5 connections.

Having said that, it does not mean that you should include weak connections which hardly has much activities going on. Weak connections reduce your dividends per share value  and discourage potential investors from exploring further.

3. Avoid The Urge To Spend Eaves Frivolously On Silly Missions

You will be given a handsome sum of eaves to start your EA experience. But keep in mind that in EA, 500 eaves is small change and you will soon realise that you need a substantial amount of eaves for creating ‘Missions’ that drive your personal objectives.

Eg (e)RJFRASCA here is offering a reward of 2,000 eaves for other EA Users to ‘Like’ his Facebook Page and shower ‘Likes’ on 5 posts.  You will be tempted to use your starting eaves on some silly Missions to test if they work. Trust me, Missions are really effective drivers to achieve your goals.

So before you work out what your key objectives are, resist the urge to spurge.

4. Avoid Clueless Investments

I know you now have a decent stash of cash and you are excited to get started. The common bad moves made by rookie are for example buying the first thing they see on the recommended panel, buying established big brand names outright, buying shares because a friend asked them to do so or buying the highest-priced stocks blindly.

Treat EA like a regular stock market, never invest in a stock that has no real value. If you are interested in an particular stock, visit their profile page to dig out more information. Look at their share price history, the number of connections they own, how these connections are performing and visit these connections to see what they are all about.

Only invest after you have done all these background checks.

5. Avoid Going For Capital Gains Over Dividends

I made this mistake of targeting capital gains instead of dividends at the beginning. You should select stocks based on the dividends per share and not on shares which are heading on an upward trend.

This is because a strong influencer can deliberately inflate their share price by nudging their followers to buy them. Dividends will offer a much more accurate measure of the profile share value. The profile has to be active across multiple social networks to earn profits (eaves) and enhance their dividends per share.

The dividends per share value is conveniently available beside share price on the individual profile page. Invest in profiles with dividends per share greater than 1.00 to enjoy a stable base of regular dividends.

6. Avoid Being Addicted!

There are loads of things to look out for before investments, great communities to meet people and interesting missions to accomplish on EA. It’s really easy to get sucked into all the action and neglect your existing social media platforms.

Always remember that your connections scores will have impact on your share value and how attractive your profile is as an investment. It’s really important to know when to halt your activities on EA and look after your existing commitments.

My list of rookie mistakes to avoid may not be exhaustive. Treat EA as your new social media game. Have fun, enjoy the process and don’t worry about making some bad moves. Learn from them, adjust your investment style and share with us your experiences too!

Before I go, just to gentle reminder to buy my shares (e)AspirantSG. You won’t regret it.

You may also like to check out my posts on other interesting social media topics here.

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• How to avoid rookie mistakes on Empire Avenue – June 16, 2012