Google+ Communities Will Connect You To Gamers

In one push of the button Google has elevated the activity on its social network Google+ substantially, seemingly in just one day. If you haven’t heard about Communities yet then let me tell you a little about them.

First of all why should you be on Google+? There are a number of reasons, but with sticking to the theme of marketing your game and company I’ll focus on that for now. Maybe the biggest reason to be on Google+ at least on a personal account is to network. I have spoken to a lot of you through Twitter over the last few months and Twitter does a great job of helping you find people with a similar interest as you. The strength and weakness of Twitter, however, is its limited format. You get your 140 characters and then you’re done. When you’re trying to have a conversation with people this can get frustrating. “Why not just use Facebook then?” you may ask. The answer to that is that Facebook is more of a private social media site for a lot of people. You are less likely to accept a friend request from someone you’ve never actually met in real life. This means you also aren’t chatting with them.

So what does Google+ have to do with all of this? Everything. Google+ effectively combines the networking strengths of Twitter using hashtags, and the comfortable, open feeling of Facebook using chat features and no character limits on posts. Google+ actually takes this a step further by allowing anyone the ability to video chat rather easily. I’ve been using the video chat software (Hangouts as it’s referred to) for a few weeks for our “On Air” series of interviews.

To sum all of this up – You can easily find gamers and game developers on Google+, begin talking to them about shared interests, and collaborate on projects or discussions using video networking software… all for free! Sign up!

So what are Communities?

Communities on Google+ make finding others with similar interests as you even easier than hashtags.  A Community can be either private or public, be a topic, a place, an interest or anything you’d like to share with others.

The owner can also customize communities. What this means is you can set up different discussion, similar to a forum, where people can post different topics within the overall community. As an example, I created the Indie Games Community earlier today. Within the Community I created the following sub topics:

• For Gamers
• For Devs

This organizes posts for members and clearly illustrates where your post should go. These discussions can be rearranged, renamed, added, or subtracted at any time by the Community owner.

Google+ Hangouts can also easily be created, at any time, with any group members. A Google+ Hangout is a powerful videoconference software built directly into Google+. I don’t like calling it video chat because there is so much more that can be accomplished with it. There is text chatting, audio, and video built in. In addition a screen share feature lets you easily show what you are working on to others in the hangout. Another great feature is Google Drive integration. You can work on documents with others in real time while all being on the same broadcast as if you were in the same room. Extremely powerful for connecting developers from around the world.

Events can also be set up from within the Community. As an example, for my Startup Gamers On Air show I can set up the event in the Community so all members can see it and join if they care to. Another option for developers would be if they were going to be at a local game store or convention demoing their game. To get the word out they could set up the event and list the location, date, and time and suddenly people that never would have known about it would be informed.

Finally, the option to share any article, post, picture, or anything you find on the Internet with every member of the Community is not only possible now, but also extremely easy. All of those +1 buttons out there now and soon to be out there have this capability.

As you can see Google+ Communities have some huge implications in networking and that means more exposure for you, your company, and your game. There is a general rule out there though: Do not use this, or any social media, to only promote yourself. If you constantly post about how great your game is then people will ignore it and on some platforms it could get you banned for SPAM. Instead take part in discussions, comment on the work people are doing, and provide help when people are stuck.

I’ll leave you with some new Communities that you should definitely be a part of if you’re an indie game developer or gamer:

 Indie Games

Indie Game Developers

Steam

 Are there any other Communities you’ve found that are interesting? Let me know in the comments!

Talk soon,

 -Patrick

Startup Gamers helps you make a name in the indie game space. Click START for updates!

Advertise Your Dev Page On Facebook For More Likes

Last week I talked about how to start engaging on social media.  I also touched on Facebook Likes and said that I would come back to it. Well here I am coming back to it. I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty of what you should be posting on a daily basis to your Facebook page (not yet), but I do want to show you how to advertise your page to people who will want to see it.

You’re probably thinking, “Patrick, I’m an indie game startup, I don’t have the money to start advertising. That’s why I’m using social media in the first place; it’s free!” I hear you, but the majority of page owners contact their friends and family to share the page and hope they will find some customers. I’m not saying you shouldn’t utilize friends and family, but the problem here is that Facebook’s networking capabilities are limited to a local network for a lot of folks. You aren’t selling your game to just your local market, you are selling to the world.

$40 US will net you roughly 200 Likes if you target the correct audience with an engaging ad. 200 Likes is a good start, from there you can rely on your social skills to keep those fans engaged. The more likes and comments you get on posts that you put up, then the more people will begin to see your page from around the world – for free! So let’s dive in to how you begin a Facebook advertising campaign.

Create The Ad

 The first thing you need to do is begin creating the ad. Once you are on your page you’re taken to the “admin panel.” From here you’ll want to click on “Build Audience” and then “Create An Ad.”

What Are You Advertising?

Now it’s time to tell Facebook what you’re advertising. Since I’m discussing how to generate Likes on your game dev page then you should select your Facebook Page here. But be aware that if you’d like to advertise an outside site, like your blog or website, then you can do that here as well.

What Is Your Objective?

Now you need to tell Facebook your objective for the advertising. Since you are trying to gain more likes on your page you should select “Get More Page Likes.”

Another option here is to promote a particular post which you may want to do if you want one of your page’s posts to show up near the top of your fan’s news feeds for a longer amount of time. This may be to promote a link to a game demo or the link to your website. This will only be promoted to current fans, but know that friends of fans will be able to see it if they’ve interacted on the post.

Another option here is to use the advanced options. You may want to do this if you want to promote an event. Maybe a demo you’ll be putting on at a local game shop.

Your Ad

In this section you will build your ad. The dimensions for your picture are 100×72 PX. I’d recommend creating an image in these dimensions specifically for the ad, this way the picture pops off the page and catches attention.

Your headline will be defaulted to your page’s name. In other ad settings discussed earlier you can change this up to 25 characters.

You are allowed 90 characters for the actual text of the ad. It is important to make every word count! This could be the tagline of your company, your current game, or anything you think will catch the attention of your target audience. Be careful here because all ads need to be approved and Facebook has strict guidelines for ads. For instance, placing more than one exclamation point after another is not allowed. I’ll talk about crafting tag lines in a later post.

Finally, you need to choose where people will land when they click on your ad. This can be your timeline or any tab you have on your page. You can get creative and set up a special tab on your page which unlocks some kind of bonus for people who Like the page. A reward for this may be a special wallpaper of your current game.

Sponsored Stories

The main thing to know here is that you should have “People Liking Your Page” checked off. This will ensure that when someone likes your page from this ad, it will then show up as a story for their friends, effectively getting your page out in front of more people.

Choosing Your Audience

 Here is a critical portion to your advertising. You need specify who exactly is going to see your ad. You might ask, “Why can’t I just type in every country in the world and let the ad run?” The reason this isn’t recommended is because people will end up seeing your ad that have no interest whatsoever in your game. Every view costs you money – you want the people who will want to play your game to see it!

As a starting point I would suggest selecting 4 countries that you’d like to get your name out to. After that select age and gender based upon whom your current game is designed for. I’ve said this multiple times in different articles, but you need to know your audience! If your game is designed for girls 13-17 then target that demographic. If your game is made for toddlers you should probably target males and females between the ages of 24-35 because they will be the ones downloading it, not the toddler.

For precise interests make sure you make a list of all games out there that are similar to your game in some way. By targeting people who like similar games you will get more engagement on your posts. I don’t recommend targeting a precise interest of “gaming” or “gamers” or anything similar. You can do this in the next section. Because you are looking for a small number of initial likes I recommend targeting as specific a person as you can, this way you get the most engagement from them later on.

After your precise interest targeting it is time to select broad interests. Within this section you can include an interest such as “gaming” (gaming is located under the “Activities” tab).

Your Connections or Not?

For gaining more Likes on your page you should leave “Only people not connected to _________” selected. This way you aren’t advertising to people who already like your page. When you’re spending money you want to get your name out in front of as many unique people as possible.

Pricing and Timeline

Finally you can set the amount of money that you would like to spend for the advertising campaign. Like I said earlier, $40 US will usually get you about 200 Likes if you target the correct audience and create a compelling ad. This will be enough people around the world interested in your game to start some good engagement with.

For the “Campaign Budget” select “Lifetime” and then select which dates you would like to run the campaign between. Because you selected “Get More Page Likes” the optimization is set to do this. Your pricing is also set to CPM as the default for generating Likes. CPM is Cost Per Thousand Impressions and it means you are charged a small amount every time someone on Facebook sees your ad. This is important because you are banking on the ad you created of your game to generate enough interest for someone to click Like.

From here you are all set to go! Click on “Place Order” and set up the payment details. Once this is complete Facebook will need to approve your ad. Once they have approved it you will receive a notification saying so and the ad will begin to run throughout the campaign timeline you’ve set.

Engagement

As the Likes start coming in don’t just sit back and do nothing! Post once or twice a day. As I said in an earlier post, the best time to post on Facebook is at Noon ET. How to engage your audience is another topic altogether, and something I will tackle soon. Until then good luck with your campaign and please feel free to comment on anything you see here, or ask any questions you have. I’d love to help if I can!

Talk soon,

-Patrick

Startup Gamers helps you make a name in the indie game space.Click START for updates!

4 Easy Steps To Creating A Marketing Schedule As A Solo Games Maker

How do you manage your time between your day job, creating your game, and marketing your game? I got this question a few times since I put up my last post earlier this week. From talking with different developers there is a feeling that if they spend too much time marketing then they won’t ever get their game completed. This is especially a concern for the solo game dev, but it can affect any small game studio. What I’m going to attempt to do is list out some tips and tools for managing your time effectively so that you can both create your game and spend the necessary time marketing it.

Let’s go!

1. Create A Schedule

This is the first and most important aspect. If you don’t create a schedule for yourself you’ll end up developing the same game forever. I remember a quote from the movie industry that I believe Peter Jackson said – “You never finish your movie, you just run out of time.” The same can be said for game design. Just because you’re indie doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a deadline. Deadlines are important for a lot of reasons, but the most important of all is having a day on the calendar you are shooting for. If you have a date, you have a goal.

Here are the top three things you should take into account for your timeline:

• Allocate one hour a day for marketing
• Allocate a full day off a week (it’s important to the creative process to have a day off)
• Allocate two hours a week to write two short updates for your blog

After you take this into account make your best guess at a date that you will have a completed game. Mark that date on your calendars (digital, desk, or both) because this is your target date! This is your goal!

 2. Get Social Media Management Software

The importance of having software like this is immeasurable! You need all of your brand accounts in one place, easily accessible so you can quickly see your conversations and schedule posts. I recommend going with HootSuite if you’re just starting out. It’s perfect for the small indie studio because it allows you to include up to 5 social media accounts. It also has the Klout scoring feature built in so you know what kind of influence your followers have in the world of social media.

Once you download HootSuite you can login with your Facebook page, Google+ page, and Twitter account. The software let’s you switch back and forth between accounts effortlessly while also being able to customize different columns. But maybe the most important function of software like this is its scheduling feature. As you read articles from the web that you think would be beneficial to your audience you can set them up to tweet out the next day at whatever time you like.

So picture this, you get home from your day job around 6PM, work on your game for 3-4 hours, and then spend 1 hour replying to conversations on social media and setting up 5 tweets to go out throughout the next day! While it would be even better if you could check your accounts throughout the day, you should at least be doing this as a minimum.

 3. Sign up for Tweriod

Each night you are scheduling posts to go up for the next day, but at what times are you supposed to schedule these posts? For Facebook all recent research shows that the best time to get the most Likes and Comments is 12PM EST. But for Twitter it could vary greatly depending on your audience. Insert Tweriod. Tweriod analyzes your followers’ activity over a certain amount of time and then quickly sends you a report of the best times to post your content each day.

This way you aren’t throwing a shot in the dark at when you should be posting your original blog post vs. an interesting article you found (HINT: Your original work should be posted at the heaviest traffic times).

4. Create a WordPress blog

It’s true that there are many, many sources to create blogs, and by no means is WordPress the right choice for everyone. However, WordPress.com offers built in widgets, built-in SEO (Search Engine Optimization – so that people can find you when they use search engines), a community of bloggers that can find your blog easily from the WordPress site, and a ton of themes that you can customize to your brand – all for free!

It also has a built-in analytics tool so you can get some basic information of where people are coming to your site from, where in the world they are, and what they are clicking on when they get there.

Earlier I said you should allocate two hours a week to creating original content for your blog. This is a MINIMUM! Split those two hours into two days – one at the beginning of the week and one at the end. Your content should include any progress you’ve made on your game and any other info you think your audience will find interesting and useful.

Hopefully this gave you a good starting point to beginning your marketing efforts with social media. If you follow these four basic steps you will feel less stress when thinking about juggling the creation of your game and marketing it. You’ll also have a one stop shop to see all of your conversations, know the best times to post, and own an original blog that will begin to attract more customers looking for your type of game.

Talk soon,

-Patrick

 Startup Gamers helps you make a name in the indie game space 

Facebook + Twitter = Game Dev Win

You finished your game and now you are going to promote it on social media! Yay!

I’ve been coming across this more and more as I talk to different developers from around the world. They’ve been told countless times that they have to get on social media and get the word out, but that’s usually as far as the advice goes. What ends up happening is that these developers tweet a bunch of times about how awesome their game is, then they tweet countless times to their game’s link, and finally they tweet each person they’re following about how awesome their game is and “here is the link!” These same developers then wonder why their sales haven’t budged and why they have no likes on Facebook.

BTW here is a secret about Facebook – you have to spend money at first. Not a lot, maybe $40 at most. That’s enough to get you a couple of hundred likes. That’s enough to get you started. I’ll cover Facebook likes in depth another time.

Back to the indie game developer who isn’t getting any traction. Probably by the time they feel like they’ve exhausted all of their attempts it’s been a couple of weeks. “If nobody cares by now they aren’t going to,” is what they say. And so, at this point, they throw in the towel and start work on the next project. Meanwhile a perfectly awesome game is getting shelved.

How do you avoid this? Get out there now! Before the game is finished, before the first level is finished. Get out on Twitter and Facebook and start talking to people. And don’t spam them, PLEASE. Don’t just tweet, and tweet, and tweet the same thing over and over again. We all know that guy – he’s on all of our feeds. You either ignore him or unfollow him. Don’t do it! Instead start building relationships. Ahhh, there it is. For those who’ve worked in retail sales you’ve heard that before. Your manager comes over after someone walks out and tells you that you need to spend more time getting to know the customer, more time building a relationship with them. The difference between retail and Twitter is that you have all the time you want to build relationships with people on Twitter. And do not be fooled, it is going to take time, know that now. It is going to take more time than you think. In fact, your relationship building is never going to stop. That’s what social media is all about – staying in touch.

Let’s review:

•  Get on Twitter and Facebook today
• Follow some people on Twitter that are interested in the type of game you are making or are planning to make
  • One way to do this is to find a few big-name games that are similar to what you’re making and begin following some people that follow those games (what a mouthful)
  • IMPORTANT: Do not overdo this! Just a few people that look interesting to you from each game
  • Begin tweeting content that your followers (potential customers) are interested in
    • The most effective tweet-to-hour ratio is 1:1 – yes, you should average 1 tweet an hour
    • Over on Facebook you should post once a day
      • A great article
      • An awesome video
      • A random question

After you’ve begun doing this then you will start to get followers. Now it’s show time! Start tweeting at some of your followers and building relationships with them. Don’t just tweet “Hey my game Skin Poison Missile is freaking awesome! Check it out here www…” Instead talk to them about topics you find interesting and they find interesting. You’ll start to notice trends with your followers. People will post about things they are into; this is your opportunity to engage with them.

Back on Facebook answer questions people post and engage in conversation when people comment on one of your posts. It’s the best way to show them that you don’t just care about their “Like”, but you care about them.

All of this is an overview, but it’s a place to start. Also, it takes a lot of time! The biggest thing is going to be sticking to your plan. Social media is here to stay and it is a part of how we do business now. It’s a full-time job in itself and it demands a lot of attention. But the great thing is that it will pay off if you do it right, AND if you have patience. Don’t give up on it. Stay active in your community and when the time comes for you to launch your game you won’t have to tweet about it 30 times a day. You’ll only need to tweet it once, your followers will take care of the retweets.

Talk soon,

-Patrick

Follow me on Tiwtter: @PDS271   

 Startup Gamers helps you make a name in the indie game space