A Facebook Presence

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

So, one of the promotional tools bandied about is a facebook page. We have the Forumites page, which is the first big step needed, but seeing as how we want to make ourselves more accessible and easily found, it might be a good idea to make use of that page. Whether it be that we ask Mr. Valten for administrative control of Forumites or we decide to create an entirely new Facebook page, I find the potential of FB to be a very important untapped well.


A few things present themselves with this new opening, and I hope to address them here.

One - a team to handle the content and how big that team should be (no less than 2 I think would be best)

Two - the content itself


Right now, two people come to my mind who would be very good choices for running our FB presence: Mandi and Jace. Both have a very good reach over different places, whether those places are FB, Tumblr, or the blogosphere in general.

As far as content, I think updates on larger discussions concerning general interests, discussion on the new SW movies, games, and even updates on some of the RP threads.

Thoughts/comments/suggestions?


edit - I don't want to create a whole new poll thread, so I'll keep track of things here.

SW-Fans Forumites - 0
TheHolo.Net - 3
Other - 0

[Charley]

Social media is where its at. Putting banners on someone else's site is old and busted.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Content like member-made drink recipes (what's in a Jedi Toilet Duck, anyway) and food recipes :)

[Charley]

I don't know if I'd want anything too off-message on a FB feed. That's just me. I mean this is our most outward-facing presence to potential newbies. Seeing "The Holo Net: Star Wars Fans" (or whatever we call it) and then getting a recipe for brioche would be, well I'd spit-take.

There's lots of discussion buzz about the star wars films we could low-effort blast out there. "How do you think the New Republic will look in Episode 7" is a good sort of thing that could spall into all sorts of discussions on facebook - and then on fans itself. Hell, we all have tons of people we interact with who are hanging on the news of this new movie and who haven't even heard of text RP for star wars. That's how I got into these shenanigans, and a lot of people back in the day did too.

[Kei'suke Zendu]

On tumblr, you could have basically anything, but most popular tumblrs have original content. Whether that be writing, images or art. Holly already has a Fans account on tumblr, actually.

Most social media stuff is like Charley said, based on the actual thing that people liked about the page/entertainer/whatever. People will post stuff to my FB feed, like a photo and then be like "What is your *whatever*?" to get comments.

For the FB, instead of making a group, we should just make a page, but I guess people already thought of that, lol.

[Darth Turbogeek]

Social media is where its at. Putting banners on someone else's site is old and busted.

Calling on the experience on another life... Social media is a really bad promotional tool. Banners of course are even worse but social media is an unbelieveable cesspool of non results. You have to be seriously viral for social media make a difference - and what goes viral is very random. I've got a few things swirling about that would surprise the hell out of people and few that wont.... it's so random. I did a few things that I am incredibly pleased with and they went no-where, a few things so utterly retarded and outright trolling and they are everywhere. However...

http://alliancemotorsport.org/newgallery/_data/i/upload/2013/03/03/20130303032056-e3e325be-la.jpg

Sometimes spectacularly good works. This one has gone viral three times in car communities. I laugh every time it turns up on Facebook yet again. However as a much wiser person than me has observed, the thing that social media does well is propogate memes, rather than good content.

*sigh*

I hate to say this as I think this is stupid but the best way to make social cesspits work is memes. Get a reputation for "funny" memes, away you go. Then your real content has a chance unless you are REALLY good and something gets hooked.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Social media is great, but I think it needs to be consistent (both in terms of the tone of the content and the frequency that it's released) to be in any way effective.

I think the reason TGC have over a 1000 likes on their podcasts page is because new content is created at least once a week, rather than the page just being a news aggregation feed.

[Kei'suke Zendu]

^ I agree with Dasq, not so much Mark. It is all about putting out content consistently, especially on Facebook and YouTube. Hell, even tumblr. Random stuff DOES go viral - I have ONE video on my YouTube with over 44,000 hits, my others have less than 100 each - but I also think it has to do with promotion and being seen by the right people (It was posted on Cute Overload, hence the hits).

We would need to consistently put out new, original content that'd be something they'd only get from Fans at least once a week.

[Captain Untouchable]

Something I think we need to consider very carefully is what we actually mean by "content".

Bear in mind that if we are trying to post unique to Fans content, the vast majority of what we have to draw from is a version of a story that no one knows, with characters they are unfamiliar with, but using image claims that they may know from other things. Creating a trailer on Youtube to advertise a particular story arc is awesome for us because we know who everyone is... but from the outside observer, you just created a video of of Legolas and Killian Jones teaming up with Angelina Jolie, Colonel Tigh, and Bruce Wayne, to fight against Echo from Dollhouse and Shinzon of Remus. No matter how many carefully chosen lines of dialogue you slip in, no matter how well edited it is, it won't make sense if you're outside of our community.

It's a similar story with gif sets and Tumblr. I have a blog on Tumblr where I do gif sets for Fans characters, not because I expect to get followers but because it's kinda fun. I have managed to attract a couple of strangers who follow my blog, but that's not because they're interested in my gif sets for Fans stuff: it's because one time the characters that were paired in a gif set matched with a pairing that is popular in a particular fandom... effectively, I have followers based on a false premise. They've stuck around, because I don't post prolifically enough to that blog for it to overload their dash and become annoying... but it's a potential problem for any Fans stuff we do.

We want to attract followers with new content, yes... but we need to be careful that we're creating content that is going to appeal as universally as we can possibly make it, while at the same time being careful that we aren't attracting people under false pretences.

Using Facebook and Tumblr and other media platforms as a way to make our community more awesome is a great idea. If we can use Facebook to draw attention to articles that we've got on the front page, or to spotlight specific threads that are worth a read, or we're using Tumblr to react to events that happen, that's fantastic. Imagine how awesome it'll be if we reach the point where you can go on Tumblr, and in the theholo.net tag you've got people making mashup gif sets for Original Sin, taking gifs of image claims from films and TV and adding dialogue from our threads as subtitles to recreate scenes that we've written... that would be fantastic.

Mark has got a good point, though. All of this stuff is going to make our community a more attractive place to be when someone comes looking, but it's not "advertising". I think we need to be clear on that, and focus our attention on that. We're making Fans bigger, we're increasing it's "mass shadow" on the internet... but the result is going to be to prevent people from jumping to hyperspace (ie. make them stick around), rather than actually ripping new people out of subspace.

We can use these tools for recruitment, but that needs to be an ancillary function, not the main focus.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

For now, content should be simple. Nothing completely RP related, but more toward the speculation for the new films. We have artists here who like to share their art, so as long as those artists give their permission, we can share that stuff. We can make new art for it. Some of our members cook and bake, and if Mandi happens to make a cake one day and decorate it all up with star wars stuff, she can take a picture of it and post it to the wall. Pictures that people take at the conventions they go to can be put up, as well as pictures taken at meetups.

Finding content that is not RP related is easy, and I think that's where we need to start.




If anyone would like to help with this particular project, that would be awesome. Just post here and if you've got ideas, then voice them.

[Captain Untouchable]

We can certainly find content that isn't Fans related, as you say. I'm just trying to emphasise the point that we can't expect Facebook or Tumblr to be this magical viral recruiting tool for us. If it's something we do, I think it needs to be done with a view for improving the community we have, not because we think it'll land us a new one.

Realistic expectations, and all that. :)

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

It should be Fans related; just not focused on the RP aspect right off the bat.

[Charley]

I can crank memes whenever I get a new mouse and photoshop or something.

[Captain Untouchable]

It should be Fans related; just not focused on the RP aspect right off the bat.

I don't really see the point in that.

The only reason to have a Facebook page that is "not focused on the RP aspect" is if you're worried about people stumbling across the page and not knowing what's going on. That just isn't how Facebook works. The chances of someone stumbling across the Facebook page before they've already found the forums is extremely slim. Facebook pages are for the "Don't forget to like us on Facebook!" style of marketing. Once you're already familiar with the "product" - once you've already got an audience - it's for spreading updates, promotions, and making sure that your product remains prominent in people's minds.

If Facebook isn't going to get us m/any new people, I think we should just embrace the idea that it's "for us", and use it as another aspect of the community we can cultivate. We should absolutely have in-jokes and RP-based memes - "Socially Awkward Cirrsseeto" and stuff. There's not really a reason not to; that's not the role in marketing that Facebook fills, (unless we're planning to pay for advertising space).

Tumblr is a different story. On Tumblr, we could make something not RP related and have it go viral, but we should also put out Fans/community related content to. We lure in followers with a cartoon of the final moments of Episode III redrawn with cats... and then we lure people over to the forums with references to a community they don't know and that piques their curiosity.

Like I said - realistic expectations. Facebook and Tumblr are two different things, and they need to be used differently if we're going to make the most of them. Again... IMO.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

It's just my opinion, and I only felt that we should start off with a bunch of the other stuff, and let everything else come along naturally. Frankly right now I think we should just start to think of content to share no matter what it is. Also we should decide whether we want to keep the title of SW-Fans Forumites, or if we should change that to TheHolo.Net.


I also threw together a cover photo that might work:

http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh126/silancy/forumites-cover-photo.jpg (http://s255.photobucket.com/user/silancy/media/forumites-cover-photo.jpg.html)

[Captain Untouchable]

I get that you're just trying to be... overcautious? I just genuinely don't think we need to at this point, maybe not ever.

No matter what someone comes up with, I guarantee we will be able to find a place for it. That place might be a Facebook page, it might be a Tumblr blog, it might be getting Tweeted out, we might want to create a particular kind of article for the front page, it might be something else... but I am 100% sure we will be able to make use of absolutely everything anyone can possibly put together. No restrictions. No capes!


Admittedly, at least 80% of my position stems from wanting you to start making dot Net again ASAP, so... y'know. I'm just trying to make sure you don't have any excuses not to. ;)

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Let's use this time now to figure out what we want to call it.

Cast your votes, you crazy cats.

__ SW-Fans Forumites
__ TheHolo.Net
__ Other?

[Droo]

Officially, we're now recognised as TheHolo.Net. I think calling the Facebook page anything else would cause some confusion.

[Rev Solomon]

I concur with Droo - branding needs to be consistent, or we've undermined the whole point of having a social media presence.

[Kanarik Tajiin]

I'm going to chime in here and say that sometimes Google works pretty well if you can get near the top of page 1 (page 2 is where we hide the bodies). I personally found this website after searching in google for essentially a "star wars post-by-post roleplay site" or something similar EDIT: I found it through another website listing star wars roleplay sites. However, the following searches do not even get close to Fans: star wars written roleplay site; star wars play by post rpg; star wars written roleplay website and many others beside this. It might help to have better tags and artificially-inflated search numbers in order to attract more attention. That aside I think Facebook would be good if there was a sort of constant change like a Thread of the Week and other shenanigans (kind of like the wiki page). If you want more young'uns like me I think social media, preferably Tumblr or Facebook would be the best

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Good point about google. On a whim a few days back I did some searches for star wars roleplaying sites, and I couldn't even find us on the first five or six pages. Folks more in the know about what tags to use as well as search numbers will give you a better starting solution than I could at this point, though. I myself found this place ages back when it was still on ezboard, and a part of a links page that had TSO, TMC, and other RP sites on it. About five or so years back, Holly did a really good job of putting out banners to link sites; Star Wars 100 or Top 100 SW Sites I think was one of those. I think it would behoove us to revisit that method of putting our name out.

FB content wise, I think overall it would be easy to find fun content from here; your notion of a 'thread of the week' is a really good one, and wouldn't be difficult at all to do. We could also do a quote of the week sort of thing, whether it be from and RP or a non-RP post. Reshmar and Kraken have both put a ton of work into ship creation; perhaps we could feature one of their creations every few weeks? NFL Pick-Ems, snippets from the random thought thread, and the like.


On the matter of the FB name, I also agree that it should be TheHolo.Net. Droo hit the nail on the head I think.

[Aaron Nomarr]

Part of the problem for googling things like star wars roleplay sites is that the star wars rpg's take up most of the results. I would gear the tags toward star wars, sw, fans, holo, rpg, roleplay, play-by-post, written roleplay, and sw fans. As for facebook, there should be a section for overall plot arc for the site so newbies aren't completely lost. One thing that might help is a link sections with valuable information ( wikis in particular).

[Captain Untouchable]

I don't think we need overall plot arc stuff on Facebook. If new people want information on the storyline, they can find that information by coming to the forums. Similarly, showcased threads, showcased ships, showcased articles, and showcased characters should all link back to the forums or the wiki, rather than hosting the information on Facebook. We don't want Facebook to become a separate thing, it's just another bit.

Speaking of which, the way the wiki is set up, it loads with the TheHolo.net banner at the top. Is there any way to achieve the same sort of thing with Facebook (using frames?), so that if people click the Facebook button in the menu it opens within the forums, rather than opening a new window? The same sort of thing with Tumblr?

It's not essential by any stretch, but being able to look at the Facebook page, the Tumblr blog, etc without leaving the site could be a cool way to make those things feel less distant/disconnected.

[Mandy with an I]

http://sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?55576-Holo-net-Tumblr-Submission-Thread&p=1028144#post1028144



Tumblr thread.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

If anyone would like to go ahead and pull the trigger on this, feel free :)

I will gladly help provide graphics for whatever is needed :)