Publish a marketingplan

[Wazzaaa.nl]

We need to make a marketingplan if we want to stimulate pop. growth in TW.I know this has been discussed a 100 times, but no action is taken.
We need to set specific goals, make a strategy, promotional activities when and where.
I don't know who's in charge of the marketing of TW, but it's just poor.
No marketing activities are shared with the community, not sure if there even are marketing activities going on.
If you do something, make sure you share this with all of us.
There are tons of websites like http://raptr.com/ try to get in touch with these websites and get our game online.
Or megamanexes idea to get in touch with a Youtube personality who will promote our game.


Also social media of TW is crap, just look @ the FB page, the last update was on 9 oct. 2012.
https://www.facebook.com/TWSubspace
Whos in charge of the page? Do something about it, promote it with updates,
give away prizes, cash event updates, happenings,be creative etc.
https://www.facebook.com/advertising/
Anyways theres like 2.2k available for advertizing and in the expense details it's only used for useless websites.
Maybe even sign someone to Social Media Department so someone can focus on this and
keep on coming up with new ideas and promoting it with social media.

[Star Fox]

I think keeping a Facebook/Twitter/etc page up to date is secondary priority (if its lucky) to something more direct like banners on proper sites. The freshest and best idea I've heard recently is to get a prominent YouTube streamer to play the game. Then all of his/her followers will inevitably join them at least for the duration, and we might have 20-30 who stay if we're lucky.

[Wazzaaa.nl]

I agree that getting a YouTube streamer to play our game is a great idea.
But it's not smart to put all our hopes in just 1 activity, don't put all your eggs in one basket.
This is just one of the activities to focus on. Btw if you use Facebook you know how it works, people first Facebook the page of the company, artist or game. You want to check out all the Facebook pages of the games that YouTube personalities put out there.
All these games are highly active on Facebook. Facebook is still the biggest Social Media source out there, with 1.23 billion monthly active users.
I'm sure if you make smart use of Facebook, you'll get some new players..
Therefore it is important to keep acitivity going on the Facebook page.
If it doesn't look attractive it's just another factor that witholds them from installing the game.

Trenchwars is just like a store, first people look outside the store; the storefront, the logo, the pavement, the door etc. it all needs to look attractive before people will step inside the store. It looks pretty deserted atm.

[Star Fox]

No matter how up to date we keep a SS Facebook group with 100-200 followers, people are still only going to find it if they are looking for it...it's nice to have, but I'm not seeing how Facebook itself being so popular == ppl are going to randomly come across our 2D spaceship group.

I do agree it's important to keep it up to date though, otherwise people who do pass by the page will not take it seriously if it's barren.

[bkgmjo]

In that order:

1. Plan
   1. Create a plan on which changes will happen and a rought ETA. (Keep log with dates of what happened when. Include backups!)
   2. Find people to lead the specific tasks as ultimate deciders without half of upperstaff getting in the way of everything, but also take responsibility. Maybe even pay them for quality work (see below), which would be a much better use of donations than random cash events for always the same people.
   3. Actively supply your PR department with information to enable it to get and evaluate player<->staff communication.
2. Cleanup
   1. Clean all current public download links from malware and remove dead links.
   2. Clean the game from disruptive people, may it be staffs, perma-cheaters, spammers or extreme trash-talkers.
   3. Remove all current "tests" and put working settings and map back in place.
3. Improve
   1. Get achievement system done.
   2. Connect tw with ppls fb/twitter/whatever profiles.
   3. Create fb app which publishes achievements on their pages. (basic system about 30 lines of code + dev account)
   4. Extend app to invite friends, chat in game, blah.
4. Polish
   1. More user-friendly interface. (Website, Bot commands, Tutorial, Staff Profiles, Rules, ...)
   2. Clean up and repair forums. (including a change to a free system which actually works like phpBB or something)
   3. Clean twcore reports and restrict reporting to people who know how to do that.
   4. Get up a funding system for specific projects similar to kickstarter or the like. If possible cross-zone to not have to make the same advances multiple times.

At least this is how successful games do it. From there you could start breaking it with random testing of things someone thinks are better again.

[2pac]

we need social media like instagram snapchat etc...

[Johnno]

If those 100-200 followers were to share things off the facebook page that would be probably seen by around 15000-30000 new people that would see we exist if everyone had an averages of about 150 friends most people will have more. Not saying everyone will come and play the game based on that hardly anyone will most likely but you will get some.

[Shaddowknight]

It's simple, you do a share/like/comment post contest. It gets the page out there, as long as the prize is something they want. It's also not like it takes them much effort.

[LF]

It's simple, you do a share/like/comment post contest. It gets the page out there, as long as the prize is something they want. It's also not like it takes them much effort.

That's actually a really good, albeit simple idea and I'm a little upset that I didn't think of it myself a lot earlier. We could spend a couple hundred bucks, buy a few xbox's or ps4's and offer them as rewards for bringing people into the game as a "referral program". One xbox/ps4 can be rewarded to an existing player for having the most NEW referrals that stick around longer than say...30ish days. The other xbox can be rewarded to one of the new players starting on or after xx/xx/2014 as an extra incentive for downloading the game and sticking around for again longer than say...30ish days. The fine details can be discussed among the council and staff COULD start thinking of ways to patch up our own ways to ensure fairness to everyone involved. Maybe I'm missing something huge entirely but I doubt it, and Im actually kind of excited about this idea as its good for absolutely everybody involved. With the proper advertisement I think this concept could be huge.

[Wazzaaa.nl]

Being active on social media is just the basics in modern marketing,
if you can't comprehend the necessity of this it's better for you to pick up some books and come back after you've finished them.

[LF]

Being active on social media is just the basics in modern marketing,
if you can't comprehend the necessity of this it's better for you to pick up some books and come back after you've finished them.

So you are going to dislike every idea that isn't your own without any sort of reasoning as to why? Its bad enough that 90% of the council got voted in because nobody else could be bothered to even apply but perhaps you should start approaching things with more of an open mind or you are not going to last very long

[Wazzaaa.nl]

So you are going to dislike every idea that isn't your own without any sort of reasoning as to why? Its bad enough that 90% of the council got voted in because nobody else could be bothered to even apply but perhaps you should start approaching things with more of an open mind or you are not going to last very long

Nope just disliked yours, only yours don't think you're something special or something.
Your post is full of sarcasme and not constructive at all, it's just a useless post trying to act smart without having any knowledge of the topic.
That's worth a dislike in my opinion w/e you like it or not. You're just one person, don't make it look like I dislike every idea cause that's not the case buddy.
My mind is very open but it's not open to sarcastic assholes with nothing of value to say.

[Ricko]

I don't think LF was being sarcastic at all?

[LF]

I was literally making zero attempt to be sarcastic... The thread was about marketing and I simply contributed an idea towards the plan. We have money just sitting around collecting dust and I thought it would be a good idea to actually spend some of it to bring players into the game (aka marketing) as compared to continuing to spend it on servers we don't need or just letting it continue to sit without interest anywhere. I even made a point at the end of my post that the council could be the ones to figure out the details. My idea essentially puts the concept of MARKETING THE GAME into the hands of the community instead of leaving it in the hands of our marketing department in staff, which has proven to be quite useless over the years. I contributed an idea for the council to discuss and whether you like it personally or not please tell me how this is not "constructive". If you don't like it, tell me why so we can discuss it like adults instead of insulting the education of somebody that has at least 4 years of formal education more than you. For the sake of staying on topic I will pretend I didn't even see the rest of your babble and humiliate you for it, but I still think my idea is worth being heard

[Shaddowknight]

Rather than an actual item, an ebay/amazon gift card code is MUCH more attractive to many, and shipping issues are not ours to deal with (Ebay always favors the buyer). Its much cleaner, and easier on us to deal with tax-exempt-wise.