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TIGSource ForumsDeveloperBusinessGetting the word out prior to KS or GL
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friken
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« on: September 24, 2014, 01:46:08 PM »

Hi guys. I keep hearing how important it is to get the word out about your game as early as possible and long prior to doing a kickstart or greenlight. Easier said than done of course. I'd like to hear what others have found effective. Here is my list of places places in rough order of results:

my project is fairly early but getting fairly close to ks/gl.

1. reddit (effective but I find it very hit/miss). The most traffic spikes I've received to our site is from reddit but of my posts or link posts 1 in 10 seem effective. I'm a reddit newb for sure.

2. IndieDB. I like the ranking system but it is near realtime so reasonable exposure but for very short amount of time.

3. Forums... TIG, Gaf, etc.

4. Twitter.... I must really suck w social media.

Looking forward to hearing what others find effective and at what stage of dev they started getting the word out about what they are working on.
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ColeyWoley
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« Reply #1 on: October 02, 2014, 08:33:45 PM »

Are you doing Facebook?  We don't post often and we don't have a huge number of followers, but a surprising amount of our KS backers came from there.
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knifeySpoonie
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« Reply #2 on: October 03, 2014, 04:07:39 AM »

Hi guys. I keep hearing how important it is to get the word out about your game as early as possible and long prior to doing a kickstart or greenlight. Easier said than done of course. I'd like to hear what others have found effective. Here is my list of places places in rough order of results:

my project is fairly early but getting fairly close to ks/gl.

4. Twitter.... I must really suck w social media.



Twitter is hard... Im currently sorting out my personal twitter, and will start a twitter for my game when we announce it...  but you have to post constantly to keep in the minds eye... also using #indiedev #gamedev etc is vitally important as that gets retweets and seen by people who search for those hashtags...

On the other hand though, Ive got 320ish followers now... and when I post somthing interesting it will get a few retweets and see an audience of manybe 500+ views or somthing really interesting will get 1-2k views... which is far more than I ever expected since Ive not been pushing much and just using it for networking to begin with.

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pikkukatti
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« Reply #3 on: October 03, 2014, 07:09:38 AM »

I'd say any kinds of game developer filled events are a good way of doing it as you bring yourself out as well. Usually showing the game personally makes people more likely to spread the awareness and you get a lot of feedback as well. Apart from that, twitter/facebook, forums, youtube, indiedb and press seem to be the most commmon ways of getting word out.
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joe_eyemobi
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« Reply #4 on: October 05, 2014, 02:17:25 AM »

If you wanna build up a twitter following - use: justunfollow.com 
You can copy users from another tweeter or topic.  I've built up to 4k followers over about 3 months with it.  I haven't been doing enough with reddit regrettably - I also don't fully get how it works.
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Christian Knudsen
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« Reply #5 on: October 05, 2014, 05:22:20 AM »

I imagine you've just followed a bunch of Twitter users that have then followed you in return as a courtesy, since you're following 4376 and have 4371 followers (and I couldn't find any working links to your Twitter -- even the one on your webpage doesn't work -- so how else did these people find you?). I'm a bit skeptical as to how much 'worth' you're getting from users that only follow you because you followed them.
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joe_eyemobi
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« Reply #6 on: October 05, 2014, 07:09:41 PM »

I imagine you've just followed a bunch of Twitter users that have then followed you in return as a courtesy, since you're following 4376 and have 4371 followers (and I couldn't find any working links to your Twitter -- even the one on your webpage doesn't work -- so how else did these people find you?). I'm a bit skeptical as to how much 'worth' you're getting from users that only follow you because you followed them.

I guess I've approached this as a pure numbers game.  You're quite correct in that the vast majority don't add much value, but the fraction that I've engaged with have been very worthwhile, e.g. youtubers, reviewers and other devs.  I can't say how many of these I would have come across had I relied on just picking them up in the normal way, but overall twitter has been quite useful to date in my opinion.

Btw which link is broken currently (thanks for spotting that)? I try to test them every now and again, but one must have slipped through the gaps  Shocked

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Christian Knudsen
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« Reply #7 on: October 06, 2014, 04:57:31 AM »

Only the Facebook link at the bottom of your website works.
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joe_eyemobi
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« Reply #8 on: October 06, 2014, 01:04:55 PM »

Oh for the main studio website - thanks for picking that up  Coffee
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Danny Hayes
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« Reply #9 on: October 07, 2014, 01:53:50 AM »

Have you heard of Thunderclap? I only knew about it while my Poncho KS was already running, so it was too late for me, but it seems like a really powerful social media tool.

Basically people support your project with a few clicks, it looks alot like a kickstarter. In return for "supporting" you can enter them into draws for pledge tiers or copies of the game. 

When the thunderclap campaign is over, if you've met a quota of supporters, then Thunderclap automatically posts on all their social media like twitter or facebook at the same time, causing a spike in awareness about your kickstarter. Like I say, I didn't get a chance to use it, but it could be useful?

https://www.thunderclap.it/
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joe_eyemobi
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« Reply #10 on: October 07, 2014, 11:40:56 AM »

Have you heard of Thunderclap? I only knew about it while my Poncho KS was already running, so it was too late for me, but it seems like a really powerful social media tool.

Basically people support your project with a few clicks, it looks alot like a kickstarter. In return for "supporting" you can enter them into draws for pledge tiers or copies of the game. 

When the thunderclap campaign is over, if you've met a quota of supporters, then Thunderclap automatically posts on all their social media like twitter or facebook at the same time, causing a spike in awareness about your kickstarter. Like I say, I didn't get a chance to use it, but it could be useful?

https://www.thunderclap.it/
That sounds kind of interesting - what is the main benefit of the posts after the actual campaign though?  Since you can't get any more backers at that time, is it just more general publicity?
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Danny Hayes
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« Reply #11 on: October 07, 2014, 11:53:08 AM »

Well no, you can set the date for the post to be when your KS launches, which would be better, but you could use it to time with any large event about your game
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pikkukatti
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« Reply #12 on: October 10, 2014, 05:28:43 AM »

Have you heard of Thunderclap? I only knew about it while my Poncho KS was already running, so it was too late for me, but it seems like a really powerful social media tool.

Basically people support your project with a few clicks, it looks alot like a kickstarter. In return for "supporting" you can enter them into draws for pledge tiers or copies of the game. 

When the thunderclap campaign is over, if you've met a quota of supporters, then Thunderclap automatically posts on all their social media like twitter or facebook at the same time, causing a spike in awareness about your kickstarter. Like I say, I didn't get a chance to use it, but it could be useful?

https://www.thunderclap.it/
Seems interesting, but from what I've heard from other developers it doesn't have that much effect and even some larger projects they had were mostly supported by relatives and friends on Thunderclap. Should be worth trying out, but I'd keep my expectations in check.
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friken
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« Reply #13 on: October 14, 2014, 05:16:20 AM »

Are you doing Facebook?  We don't post often and we don't have a huge number of followers, but a surprising amount of our KS backers came from there.

I've tried using facebook for previous game projects and it seemed to be very very ineffective -- handful of followers, virtually no comments on posts etc. I'm not quite sure how to get the right people looking at it on facebook. I think a lot of people use facebook like I do, basically just a method of keeping it touch w family/friends so I am a good example of a person that wouldn't really use facebook for monitoring a game in dev. I know some people have success w fb, but it seems a mystery to me on how they accomplished it.
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qwurp
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« Reply #14 on: October 14, 2014, 05:29:47 AM »

I've tried using facebook for previous game projects and it seemed to be very very ineffective -- handful of followers, virtually no comments on posts etc. I'm not quite sure how to get the right people looking at it on facebook. I think a lot of people use facebook like I do, basically just a method of keeping it touch w family/friends so I am a good example of a person that wouldn't really use facebook for monitoring a game in dev. I know some people have success w fb, but it seems a mystery to me on how they accomplished it.

This.

Another challenge is the algorithm FB uses for posts now. We have a couple hundred FB fans but most posts routinely get between 14-50 views despite the number of fans. Compare this to less than 100 Twitter followers but posts reaching 400+ people.

The old days of FB posts hitting every newsfeed made FB a worthwhile investment of time. But those days are definitely over and unless you're paying for views, you can get dramatically more impact with Twitter and a good hashtag than you will ever get from even a relatively large Facebook page.
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Fenrir
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« Reply #15 on: October 14, 2014, 05:50:36 AM »

This article is quite interesting on this subject:
http://moacube.com/blog/how-we-handle-our-social-networks/
It follows what you are saying about Facebook.
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Danny Hayes
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« Reply #16 on: October 14, 2014, 05:58:17 AM »

I agree, twitter was far more useful for me than facebook. Most of the facebook pledges were friends and family.
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hagbardgroup
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« Reply #17 on: October 14, 2014, 08:01:42 AM »

I've tried using facebook for previous game projects and it seemed to be very very ineffective -- handful of followers, virtually no comments on posts etc. I'm not quite sure how to get the right people looking at it on facebook. I think a lot of people use facebook like I do, basically just a method of keeping it touch w family/friends so I am a good example of a person that wouldn't really use facebook for monitoring a game in dev. I know some people have success w fb, but it seems a mystery to me on how they accomplished it.

This.

Another challenge is the algorithm FB uses for posts now. We have a couple hundred FB fans but most posts routinely get between 14-50 views despite the number of fans. Compare this to less than 100 Twitter followers but posts reaching 400+ people.

The old days of FB posts hitting every newsfeed made FB a worthwhile investment of time. But those days are definitely over and unless you're paying for views, you can get dramatically more impact with Twitter and a good hashtag than you will ever get from even a relatively large Facebook page.

The general guideline for FB now is that you have to do some mixture of paid page promotion to get much out of it.

To do that well for games, using FB's lookalike audience tool is probably the best bet.

Twitter is moving in that general direction also, especially if they change the way that accounts work to be more FB-like.

Also, like others have said, real name social networks are not a great fit for gaming for various intangible reasons. I actually can't think of any serious gaming community in which most of the socializing is done with real names. Even competitive gamers use handles.
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