The easiest and free way to grow your game’s social media following

source: Pixabay @ pexels.com

A lot of studios struggle with growing their social media following. There are, of course, many things that could be done to enhance and speed up the process – adjusting communication strategy, posting more content etc. Some even use paid campaigns to improve their brands’ recognition. However, there’s a simple thing that can be done in the game itself that can provide a decent following and, aside from slightly altering UI, it costs nothing. In this article, I’ll talk about this little trick and will provide some info on how to measure its effects on your social media presence.

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6 simple steps of creating a great social media copy (+ AUDIO/YT VIDEO VERSION)

source: Omkar Patyane @ pexels.com

Writing an engaging copy, be it a social media copy or a longer-form can sometimes be hard. Difficulties come in many shapes and forms. Writer’s block, burnout, lack of interesting topics and so on… However, I figured out a simple workflow that is easily applicable to communication schemes we use and it allows me and my teammates to quickly create appropriate and engaging copies. And I’m going to share it with you in this post.

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What to do when a well-known member of your gaming community dies? Case study

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Death is inevitable. While we die alone, there are other people left in this world and they will want to express their emotions towards the deceased person. While it may be very hard to react to, social media and community managers should know what to do in such cases, as sometimes they just happen and we’re just faced with them and expected to act. I have encountered such a situation today and here’s what I did in the professional environment.

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Indie Games Marketing 101 pt. 4 – Pre-Release Brand Awareness

Indie Games Marketing 101 pt. 1 – figuring out the game itself and its audience

Indie Games Marketing 101 pt. 2 – F2P distribution model

Indie Games Marketing 101 pt. 3 – P2P distribution model

OK, let’s say that you conducted your marketing research, decided what kind of a game you’d like to make and you’ve already decided on the monetization model. You’re pretty confident that you got everything nailed and you started working on the title. Graphic assets are made, first prototype builds of your game are made and you think that everything is on the right track and you can finally tell people about your game. Getting across may be a tad bit difficult, though. In this post in the Indie Games Marketing 101 series I’ll showcase and discuss main ways of letting people know about your games. I will talk about each and every way of increasing your brand awareness in detail in separate posts, so you can kind of consider this article to be a listicle with a short description and pros and cons of each tool with tips at the end.

This article doesn’t talk about sales yet. It’s about making people know about your game and that’s the focus of it, so keep it in mind. An article about sales will be posted in the future.

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Maintaining a grassroots gaming community in a niche game

If you’re familiar with this blog, you probably have noticed that I’m fond of fighting games. They, as a genre, have very much to offer. However, there are big series like Tekken, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat (Guilty Gear, perhaps, as well) and rarely anything else gets covered in the press. That’s a shame because there are many interesting sub-genres and games, which fly under the radar of everyday player and sometimes, the fighting game community as a whole. I believe that one of those games is Power Rangers: Battle For The Grid. I’ve been playing it on Switch for the last few months and it’s been a lot of fun, as the game has pretty much everything a high-quality product should have (aside from some stuff here and there) – good netcode, enjoyable gameplay, nice soundtrack and so on. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of players in the community, it seems. However, when they get engaged, they stick to it and they have a fun time. 

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Indie Games Marketing 101 pt. 3 – P2P distribution model

Indie Games Marketing 101 pt. 1 – figuring out the game itself and its audience

Indie Games Marketing 101 pt. 2 – F2P distribution model

The most obvious thing to do after writing about the F2P model is to write one about the P2P model. This one seems to be way more intuitive and natural since you pay for the product, but everything has its pros and cons. Without further ado, let’s get to the topic.

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How to train a Social Media Specialist?

Hi, I know that it’s been a while since I last posted an article to this blog, but I’ve had a ton of stuff to do, including a total rebuilding of my kitchen, helping out my fiancee with her obligations and so on. A pretty dynamic time in my life. But I have some topics which I’d love to talk about soon and here’s a big one. For the last month or so I’ve been training a lad to become a supporting social media and community specialist at TSG and here’s how it happened, why did it have to happen and what needs to be done.

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How to make your customers hate you. Nintendo’s Melee and Splatoon 2 controversy case study

Oh boy, has it been a rough time to be associated with Nintendo by any means. It took them two extremely poor decisions to be absolutely bombarded by their own players, by the industry and by the entire gaming part of the Internet. How it all happened? Let’s get to the story.

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High Facebook ad score doesn’t guarantee good ad performance

Facebook introduced a rating mechanism to its ads manager a few years ago (RIP Power Editor, I miss you). It serves a purpose of rating how well your ad is expected to perform and how well it’s going to be responded to. In this post I’ll be talking about one case during which I cared too much about the score and ignored everything else. A story about failure, I’d say.

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Indie Games Marketing 101 pt. 2 – F2P distribution model

Indie Games Marketing 101 Part 1 – figuring out the game itself and its audience

OK. Let’s say that you’ve decided to make your game. You got all of the mechanics sorted out and your prototype is working well. It has to earn money in order to sustain you and your team, though. You have some budget provided by an investor, but the game will have to be released someday and then it has to be economically viable. How to make money on players, though? I was supposed to talk about two main distribution models – F2P and P2P, however, after putting a few hours into writing about the F2P model, I’ve decided to publish two articles, since it gets pretty long and I don’t want my posts to be bloated. The post about the P2P model will come a few days after this one. Enjoy!

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