Social Media Marketing

Forum for suggesting changes to Salem.

Social Media Marketing

Postby KatrinaVlahos » Mon Feb 27, 2017 10:27 pm

I know players won't care about this too much but I want to voice this to the developers and actual people in charge of the game.

The lack of players could be the reason for a poor game but I don't think that's actually even the case.
What Salem is missing, to be a much better know game, is advertising.
In the day and age of the 21th century, we have to leverage the use of technology to improve our daily lives - this applies for both personal use and for businesses to grow.
E-commerce has been a boom of success lately due to the amount of people on the Internet to grow - it's been part of everyone's lifestyle - Internet access is a necessity now, not a hobby. Not using it to leverage some sort of advantage for, whether it be personal entertainment, business growth, government agenda, is, I feel, is really being lazy. And I know how lazy feels - we've all been there. I've had really lazy fits for a few months but after these I felt horrible. But trust me, after taking action, out of laziness, I'm sure that you will feel good about having actually done something.

Now I witnessed the Dock Club event the other day and it as quite fun and I was impressed that the (Game moderators? I don't know who the guy in the tophat was) was staying in-game to entertain long-term players and such. It was fun even though I died in one hit. Heh. But I feel that catering for the existing players isn't enough - that's just clinging to already-loyal people - they already love you for who you are, now help them by making their game better.

Now into the real suggestions:
Facebook Advertising. Firstly, Facebook Advertising has a very good system. You pay, pick a niche, pick a certain target audience, click accept, and your advert's good to go. Make sure you advertise a video - they're most effective after e-commerce experience. Use clickbait thumbnails - refer to how the page SoFlo adds text on top and bottom. Possibly something like "I can't believe this game is like real life" or something.

If you want to use your personal Facebook accounts, you can try advertising in Facebook groups. And by advertising, I don't mean promoting a game like most people would by posting "OHH LULZ PLOX PLAY DIZ GAEM IZ SO GUD" - NO. We don't want that. Instead of feeding new, potential players the issue of "BUY THIS NOW AND YOU WON'T REGRET IT!" and in our case, as Salem, "PLAY DIZ NOW AND YOU WON'T REGRET IT! GR8 GAEM!!" you should give them a reason to play the game. Entice them. Since your personal Facebook account could be at risk, feel free to purchase some that look authentic - sounds like an unethical thing, but that's how marketing is deep down.

Youtube sucks in terms of Salem's current state - and I'm not doing this to make the devs feel bad, I just wouldn't suggest it. Joke's on you, I actually wrote that sentence to get your attention and open your eyes to the pure potential of your game.
Contact your best players, most social butterflies, even yourself if you have to and STREAM, STREAM, STREAM and post VIDEOS! Youtube, Twitch, etc. - reward your players who advertise these things. Provide them special items that aren't so game-breaking, such as special-textured Drying Racks, red-coloured Jute Caps - things that wouldn't be game-breaking but enough to entice long-term players. If you want an example, refer to how the game "Trove" handles things. I'm not sure if they still do it but they used to have some sort of streamer reward system or something.

Advertising = Popularity = Business Growth = Thankful Players = More Profits

I have many other things to say but I'll try add more later on - I'm on my way to lift random things to Providence!
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Re: Social Media Marketing

Postby Taipion » Mon Feb 27, 2017 10:34 pm

The devs have used advertisement in the past, and were able to significantly increase the number of players, at least for some time.
The reason there is no advertisement right now, is that they are fine with the player numbers as they are, at least for now.

Correct me if I'm wrong, that's about how I remember it.
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Re: Social Media Marketing

Postby ZoddAlmighty » Mon Feb 27, 2017 10:35 pm

From you to God, from God to JC!
Amen.
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Re: Social Media Marketing

Postby Dallane » Mon Feb 27, 2017 10:47 pm

Taipion wrote:The devs have used advertisement in the past, and were able to significantly increase the number of players, at least for some time.
The reason there is no advertisement right now, is that they are fine with the player numbers as they are, at least for now.

Correct me if I'm wrong, that's about how I remember it.


I'm fairly sure that you are correct. I think they don't really want to do more advertisement until JC is back full time and a new expedition starts. It's hard to advertise for this game because of the nature of it. Permadeath forced pvp is a really hard sell for most people esp when you add money into the mix. Word of mouth is a really powerful thing for us to use. It's why there is a reward system in place to encourage that.
Please click this link for a better salem forum experience

TotalyMeow wrote: Claeyt's perspective of Salem and what it's about is very different from the devs and in many cases is completely the opposite of what we believe.
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Re: Social Media Marketing

Postby KatrinaVlahos » Mon Feb 27, 2017 10:56 pm

If you want to target permadeath-loving players, all you have to do is look for the player-base in Steam groups who are into games such as Rust, H1Z1, etc. If you can somehow look for people who have those games in their "Wishlist," you can try to show them the game since it's free-to-play. If you can find social media groups and/or forums that contain those people, even better since they're in that social media group, with their PERSONAL profiles, for the reason to dedicate their personal life to the game(s) they love. Thus, I'm sure they wouldn't mind trying out a similar, permadeath game - and if they like it, tell their friends from Rust, H1Z1, etc. about it, then self-growth occurs.

Dallane wrote:Word of mouth is a really powerful thing for us to use. It's why there is a reward system in place to encourage that.

Wait, what? There's a reward system for this? If that's the case, new players such as myself wasn't aware of this - poor optimisation of the user interface if that's the case.
Last edited by KatrinaVlahos on Mon Feb 27, 2017 11:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Social Media Marketing

Postby Dallane » Mon Feb 27, 2017 11:03 pm

KatrinaVlahos wrote:
Dallane wrote:Word of mouth is a really powerful thing for us to use. It's why there is a reward system in place to encourage that.

Wait, what? There's a reward system for this?
KatrinaVlahos wrote:If you want to target permadeath-loving players, all you have to do is look for the player-base in Steam groups who are into games such as Rust, H1Z1, etc. If you can somehow look for people who have those games in their "Wishlist," you can try to show them the game since it's free-to-play. If you can find social media groups and/or forums that contain those people, even better since they're in that social media group, with their PERSONAL profiles, for the reason to dedicate their personal life to the game(s) they love. Thus, I'm sure they wouldn't mind trying out a similar, permadeath game - and if they like it, tell their friends from Rust, H1Z1, etc. about it, then self-growth occurs.


Cept rust and h1z1 are 2 completely different games. It doesn't take days/weeks/months to build multiple characters, bases, industry , etc to be able to get a few moments of action in salem compared to instant action with no real loss in other games. Permadeath isn't the only problem. Most people don't want to do the work that this game requires. It's a hard game to sell to even the most permadeath loving people. Nothing is stopping you from doing what you said tho so go out and see what happens.

KatrinaVlahos wrote:
Dallane wrote:Word of mouth is a really powerful thing for us to use. It's why there is a reward system in place to encourage that.

Wait, what? There's a reward system for this?


Yeah check out announcements. I'm about to run out the door so I can't really look for it but there is a thread there talking about it.
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TotalyMeow wrote: Claeyt's perspective of Salem and what it's about is very different from the devs and in many cases is completely the opposite of what we believe.
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Re: Social Media Marketing

Postby matan002 » Tue Feb 28, 2017 3:41 pm

Fix the numerous bad things in-game and then advertise. That's what i believe the smart play is.
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Re: Social Media Marketing

Postby Bleuwulf » Tue Feb 28, 2017 10:52 pm

matan002 wrote:Fix the numerous bad things in-game and then advertise. That's what i believe the smart play is.


I agree with the first half of this statement: more work needs (ideally) be done to reward the players and customers that have stuck it out thus far over the years rather than trying to attract and keep "new" players,as you have to have a certain masochistic (google it) streak to stick by Salem,and current trends in popular gaming mean most "gamers" nowadays wont stick with such a harsh environment with a paywall without some kind of considerable comeback effect. look at your world of warcraft (and 1000s of clones) with the formula of "perform the same repetition X number of times and get a lil better gear" or your call of dutys (and 1000s of clones) with the formula of "spend a week leaning the maps then proceed to spawn-kill all opponents before they can blink"

Most people don't have the kind of time OR money to invest required to get anywhere in Salem,that's BEFORE the issue of if and when you do,it can all be utterly and irreversibly gone in an instant. If I seem overly harsh or salty in my opinion,let me assure you that I dont come by it lightly (25 or so years of playing/beta testing every type of game you can think of) and as someone with "industry experience" as well as the perspective of an outside observer,I can assure you that Salem is only a "unique" gaming experience because of the simple fact that so many others who followed this type of design and business model have long-since crashed and burned as their player base dried up and they became incapable or unwilling of even paying for the server space...

There is another difficult and heavy dying penalty "indie" game i enjoy online which i will not name publicly for fear of getting in trouble for it,but the only reason that game still exists is because it's the creators passion and he's willing (and able) to run it at a huge financial loss,also due to the fact that he refuses to monetize it. That said,at one point he sold it out to a major company at one point and eventually bought it back due to the company in question heavily monetizing it and thus driving the core playerbase away.

TL;DR version: having MORE players isn't going to make Salem better,quite the contrary...
This game is full of cowards. Don't fear the braggarts and blowhards,it's the ones who CLAIM to be your friends that will lure you into ambush and backstab you.....
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