growth Advertising & Social Media Presence

[Akott 34 / 2,052]

There's a lot to type here, but GFL is about to make some big moves in terms of growth and I want to make that as optimal as possible.

 

I suggest within the next 3 months that we start publishing some proper ads, mostly pertaining to large events that divisions will put on. Within this, there should be some ads as a buffer to advertise GFL, but with the recent super successful CS:GO event, more divisions should start doing similar things. I think its fair to suggest that divisions should start hosting 1 major event each year, whether its a competition, charity, game play, something. The first few ads are likely to be unsuccessful (just how it works) but people should start seeing it and we can get some better feedback from advertising platforms while gaining experience. Especially if a large event happens in the future, GFL will want to have some advertising experience under its belt to garner more attention.

 

However, deciding on a platform for ads is difficult, especially with a smaller social media presence. Most platforms reward SEO optimization and frequency of posts, so finding content is ESSENTIAL to build follower count/engagement. Besides the obvious announcements and event content, social media platforms could feature community content.

 

By taking member submitted clips of funny moments on servers and posting them on social media pages (TikTok, YT, Twitter, etc.) we can showcase positive server experiences increase support, donations, ads, and more.

This will require, most likely the PR team, to work on a content calendar, solely for social media on a monthly basis of what posts need to be made and require somewhat of a budget for the ads. We want to increase social media presence to help GFL ads, while providing a base for newcomers and outsiders to see what GFL is about. This can also help existing members interact with social media, to see if their submissions were published. Of course, before we start showing content off, we should open it up to the community first and get a decent "bank" of some content to help make frequent posts in case submissions are dry.

 

Overall, we should start working with social media and advertising budgets to properly drum up GFL support while we have the chance and slowly capitalize on our size and capacity. I would greatly appreciate ALL feedback because this was written after a council meeting and its not as polished as it could be, but getting support from the people and making ourselves known is essential for our future.

[Joshy 4,364 / 44,945]

I bet surf would be a good first candidate can at least get a small gallery of cool spots or funny moments 🙂 

[Liloz01 1,256 / 19,840]

I like the idea but... this has been brought up at least a dozen times that I know of in some way, shape or form... it always fizzles out due to being really forced and brought on way too quickly.

 

Slow and steady this time for good foundations, please!

[littlemadtiger 22 / 3,213]

As someone who does contract work in the gaming industry, I will make some advice as far as what I have seen as success for advertising. 

 

Piggybacking off of Liloz, slow and steady is the best approach. Secondly, you need to source on a popular platform for in-demand games. 

 

An example would be TF2. Maybe from 2012-2016 I would've advertised in mass for the game. But nowadays; unless you're targeting specific servers, you just won't see the constant rotation of people into all the TF2 servers as once did years ago. 

 

CS:GO maintains it's popularity because of it's competitive side being well funded and advertised. 

 

So honestly here's my point. GFL leadership might have to think about branching into more games, and potentially boosting player counts in more fluid games like CSGO, etc.  

 

If you want a more diverse pool of players and more structured leadership team, you have to branch out eventually. 

[Akott 34 / 2,052]

13 hours ago, Liloz01 said:

I like the idea but... this has been brought up at least a dozen times that I know of in some way, shape or form... it always fizzles out due to being really forced and brought on way too quickly.

 

Slow and steady this time for good foundations, please!

 

I absolutely agree, which is why we would need some time to lay down actual prep work and decide how we want to go about this to capitalize as best as possible.

 

5 hours ago, littlemadtiger said:

An example would be TF2. Maybe from 2012-2016 I would've advertised in mass for the game. But nowadays; unless you're targeting specific servers, you just won't see the constant rotation of people into all the TF2 servers as once did years ago. 

 

CS:GO maintains it's popularity because of it's competitive side being well funded and advertised. 

 

CS:GO is definitely the best starting game because of the popularity and community it already has compared to TF2 and GMOD, but if we run events with the later games I think advertising for some servers would be beneficial (though this is waaaaay in the future).

 

5 hours ago, littlemadtiger said:

So honestly here's my point. GFL leadership might have to think about branching into more games, and potentially boosting player counts in more fluid games like CSGO, etc.  

 

If you want a more diverse pool of players and more structured leadership team, you have to branch out eventually. 

 

Absolutely, but its hard to find games that host community servers or manage to actually build a large enough foundation, especially factoring in competition. I think GFL needs to start rebranding itself more as a business so we can generate some revenue outside of donations, whether it starts through investments or something else.

 

When GFL starts branching out, it will be much better if we have some advertising and social media experience under our belt to make the transition smoother and more sustainable. Social media is the future and with gaming communities like ours, it will be best to differentiate ourselves from similar organizations by beating them to the punch.

 

Besides what I've proposed, does anyone have any suggestions for more content we can post to social media?

[Joshy 4,364 / 44,945]

I've noticed a lot of complaints about GFL being too corporate or business like, and so I am worried about the rebranding idea.

 

I like the OP idea though.  I didn't feel like you were suggesting anything too fast by starting with some type of gallery or collections, which I think 6 months is pretty reasonable.  I think a person like yourself could make up a lot of content from playing and taking screenshots or videos, and hopefully with your success story more people might become interested.

 

Something that is hard is making videos without planning for it- something happens and it's not caught, or it's tacky if it's planned.  I personally use to always demo when I was online.  I just made a AHK if I hopped it on it would automatically open console and recorded a demo.  I'd grab the map name and add a timestamp.  I don't know if demos have improved since, but long demos use to have a risk of being corrupted, and I noticed certain commands like status would increase that risk (demos would play great until I opened up console and typed in status then there would be an unusually higher chance of the demo having issues afterwards); so I made the AHK start fresh demos every 15 minutes.  I had a lot of demos and would clear them out every once in a while.  If someone were willing to do something like that just hop on and always record demos, then it would be much easier to catch those special moments.  Actual demo .dem files can be driven too!  This is super fantastic because you could literally "miss" something and still catch it happening later.

 

Another good strategy to this is to consider something that doesn't have to be special moments- just to get things started.  Every time I plan a game one something that is so common is I want to look up tips, tricks, and secrets.  I'll playing a surf map that has secret spots or spots that are hard to get to, and some maps that have items.  I normally go to Youtube or Google it look for XYZ map name secrets and I look through whatever I can find.  I think it would be better if some GFL tips and tricks started showing up.  Almost every game I've ever played as some kind of website or wiki dedicated to that, and it's not uncommon for me to visit those sites more often or even join their forums 🙂 Now you wouldn't need a gallery or contribution from other players you could start off easy with like bhopping and strafing guides, and a few maps on GFL that have secrets so that when people look it up hopefully they will stumble on a GFL one; if we have a lot of them, then I think our odds will be looking good.  I've seen some mapping contests and we could capitalize on that by working with the mappers so that some of the little secrets are shared by GFL first.