Marketing Strategy

[GBE]

Embri made my brain click in one of her posts in general chat or announcements. I forget which...

Anyways, I thought we could put suggestions together as a marketing team to get Blackstar out there accross the world wide web. All suggestions are obviously welcome, the best will be put together in a marketing package, and we'll begin our assault on the internet and possibly even local towns and cities in order to make this forum known.

I'm mostly only going to be able to help with suggestions, distribution and the suchlike. I don't have any useful imaging software such as adobe photoshop or anything like that.

So, onwards with the suggestions. Perhaps we could have a few hundred members by the end of next year. I think an ideal number would be around 200 members. Could you imagine trying to roleplay with soo many people simultaneously. The amount of reading we'd have to do

Anyways, yeah, suggestions. And perhaps an admin could make this a sticky or announcement..?

GBE

[Goron40]

I don't really get it. How is 200 members a suggestion? Isn't that more of a goal?

Also I would like to point out that 200 members wouldn't mean a huge amount of role playing. If you'll notice we have 100+ now, and most of them are inactive.

[GBE]

Goron! This is a place to suggest a marketing strategy, marketing ideas etc... Look at the title, look at what I wrote. Seriously man, get some glasses or something

Two hundred active members is a lot. That'd be at least, well maybe fifty posts per forum/section a day at least to read through and reply to, or at least I'd assume so.

Anyways, suggestions please:

[Raven]

We can't just post random notices on larger sites unless we want a flood of n00bs, spammers and worse. There's a site I go on that has decent role players, but I don't go on regularly due to... you guessed it, spam. There's over 5,000,000 members O.O I supposed we could go onto over populated sites like that and pick out the good role players and pm them inviting them.

(( If you'd like to have an example of some of the role players I've come across on different sites just ask ^.^ ))

[GBE]

See Goron, a useful suggestion has been made

Thankyou Raven. It's upto you if you want to try and entice people to a spam free free-form roleplay website. So there we go, we're already developing an idea for maybe a poster or leaflet which can be distributed via e-mail, pm and website posting.

Besides, if we get noobs, we have moderators and admins who can ban members who are spammers. It won't be too hard considering the number of our ranks and what will and will not be tolerated. It's a thin line, but it's distingiushabe..

Free-form roleplay.
Spam free.
Friendly atmosphere.

Anything else?

[Goron40]

I just wanted to ask a question...

[Raven]

I've already started sending out the random pm's Actually, one that caught my eye's already joined! Luck I'll continue searching through the spam for the diamonds in the rough. I think it's better if we don't let the spam in. I'm afraid that blackstar, a haven for me might get tainted. But I have no life because I'm not allowed out, so I can filter the spam. At least I can be useful to the site!

[Panther385]

I can do some graphics or whatever- just tell me what I should weite. ('Cause I'm sooooo lazy right now. )

I suggest we do what The Glorious Evil Council does, pick out decent roleplayers, email 'em, and jab them with a pointy stick until they join.

[Embri]

*patpats Goron* Easy now everyone, no need to jump down each other's throats for ever-so-slightly off topic questions.

It would be more of a goal, Goron. And I think it's a good one. Not only that, but we should also go after those people who have already joined and see what they're doing.

For example, something like what Neopets does. If your account isn't logged into for a few months, they send you a polite e-mail with a news update on new site features, a freebie giveaway, and basically some other stuff to try and entice you back. Something like that might work for us, as well.

Important to include would be a line about who to request account closure from (or get the MOD I saw that allows people to delete their own accounts).

[3kul]

[Danikat]

Well my university has a role-play society. And a number of others that might also be interested. They tend to go for more rule-based stuff, DnD and the like, but at least some of them should be interested. I'll try getting in touch with them.

But I agree that we should focus on quality over quantity. Theres no point in having 200 active members if they're all going to be posting stuff like 'I KIL J00 N00B!!!! LOLZ!11!!' everywhere.

[Embri]

*shudders*

That's why we have belts, and Mods. RPing here on Blackstar is a privilege, not a right, and if you're going to be a eyesore, there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to remove pure spam members if they refuse to even try to improve themselves.

[GBE]

I wasn't substituting quantity for quality. I was merely saying that around 200 members who are active would be an ideal number of people to have on our small and cosy forums. I don't know if anyone agrees with that, but I thought anymore than that, we'd struggle having coherent storylines.

It would, in theory cause large cliques to form. You might not believe me, but it does happen...

*Gives Goron a tissue. A wet tissue..*

[Raven]

Hah, well if we're only aiming for 200 members then it'll be easy for me to hand pick a few. I've decided to research their posts a bit more (And try not to do it when I've been up over 36 hours straight xD) I can take over this job if you wish, shouldn't be a problem. I can just browse some forums while I do other stuff online.

[Danikat]