Today I have an interview up in my guild feature series ‘ Galaxy of Guilds‘ where the guild leader of The Iron Hand, Essenrik explained why he was having trouble advertising for new guild members on the SWTOR.com forums. Other guilds may skip the forums entirely and focus their advertisement efforts on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus. Some crack out the most amazing recruitment videos and air them on youTube. And then there are the fellows that spam General Chat with their guild ads. Not my personal preference but what do you do when getting seen and heard is so difficult?
Here is a pub owner who knows how to grab attention! Image source: Pomegranate/pom8.com
Here is what Essenrik told me in regards to his own woes:
Personally the toughest challenge for me was advertisement and recruiting. It took a lot of effort. I was lucky that members of our RP guild on WoW brought the subject up and the interest grew from there, so we already had a player base before the guild was officially founded, but advertising on swtor.com has proved to be an impossible case. There are so many guilds fighting for members, and whenever a recruitment post has been put up, it’s pushed down immediately by ten others or the more larger guilds. Up to Launch many one-man guilds were getting desperate for their four members with pre-orders which made it even more difficult.
- Essenrik, The Iron Hand.
How do you feel about guild recruitment? What does your guild do?
TORWars Podcast #152: The Terrors of Nuturing the SWTOR Community
I’m still unguilded myself, and trying to find a halfway decent guild is really a pain. The glaring lack of server-specific forums is exacerbated by the also-glaring lack of a search function and the web of sub-categories in the Guild Hall portion of the official forums. It might be good to know what guilds are available on other servers if at some point in time there is a server transfer system in place. But for now, I just want to know who is recruiting on MY server…
I would say
1. On server forums but we don’t have those and likely wont get them for a long time.
2. In a “trade” chat, but again we dont have those either.
For a game that touted that it’ll build up a community of players and that Bioware was going to support that community, they certainly have a very funny way of showing it.
I’m a rather firm believer that the best advertisement you can offer for your Guild is holding your members to high standards of Character. If your guildmates are seen regularly helping new folks on general chat, offering heals and a hand when someone is about to die, offering buffs willingly, not being a douchenozzle to thy enemy, and generally being all-around nice people. Folks will take notice! They will want to be a part of that respected group. Pax Republica has been organizing “troll patrols” on the Twin Spears server, offering deterrant for level 50′s coming back to beat on a few helpless questors and I can’t help but smile every time some non-affiliated person compliments us on General chat. We’ve got little to no post-launch advertisement to speak of, but we’ve already got a line of people waiting for us to reopen recruitment simply because of who we are and how we interact with our community.
In short, I reckon the days of being a presence on the forums or twitter to attract members is waning – proving your worth on your server and fostering an environment folks would want to be a part of is the new way to build your membership.
On the Star Trek Online site, I usually check out the ‘looking for fleet/guild’ threads and contact the folks who have the same interests that we do. That works very well.
Kristin, you guys touched on one of the most talked about topics in guild management. Recruitment is simply exhausting. There’s really know way of getting around it, unless you’re top on your server. Building notoriety is incredibly difficult, especially since there are so many other guilds with the same goal.
The best advice I can give is to really define what it is that solidifies you as a guild. Do you have great relations with your members? Do you hold regular guild events? Are you active in your server community? Find what it is that sets you apart from everyone else and push that. Push that in as many mediums as you can (and be patient). I personally used the official forums a lot in WoW (as well as community forums like PlusHeal). Individual players will post their interests there. Contact them directly. It says a lot to a player when a guild searches them out. Be active on your server. Help those that ask for it. Be friendly. They may think your helpfulness is something their current is lacking and want to app with you. Get your name out in as many positive ways as you can. It’s salesmanship and marketing. That’s what guild recruiting is about.
There is Trade chat actually, it’s channel 3 as default.
I am a believer in using general chat in a non-traditional way. We are a laid back social guild and often start silly conversation in general and start chatting with people, and then if we like their personality start talking with them via /w.
Of course there are times when I simply drop a quick general message about us and letting people know if they want the can join (we are pretty open). So far it has worked well, and we only had to remove one person form the guild (we are up to about 95 members at the moment).
Another great way to find people is to help lead warzones. I have found several new members just by being helpful and trying to ‘herd cats’ in PvP.
I am about to try a new method here too
If you are interested in a fun social guild shoot Benn, or any other Hope’s Light member a message in game (Begeren Colony), and chat with us.
Silly, fun recruitment messages can work – if you make someone laugh there is a reasonable chance you’ll get along. Don’t just take everyone who responds though – advertise in a fun, laid back way but direct applicants to your website and see what they put on their application form or give them an informal interview to make sure they are looking for what you are offering and vice versa. Getting along well with someone is a great start but they still need to be compatible with the guild for it to be a good fit for both of you.
Don’t be too serious about it. Nothing is more off-putting than ads that read something like ‘leet hardcore progression guild looking for serious players – idiots can sod off we’re only after the best of the best, must have uber gear etc’ – remember that you are not recruiting future leaders of the country, brilliant scientists or secret agents; you’re looking for people who want to play a video game the same way that you do. Being big headed about it will mean that the nice people steer clear of you and the pedantic gits line up to out-epeen each other. If you WANT a guild full of 16 year olds who think it’s cool to rage at each other, boss each other about and take it all way too seriously then go ahead and demand people jump through hoops and hand over their firstborn but don’t be surprised if your guild ends up being a drama-filled anti-fun vortex.
Also, don’t beg. If you meet someone in a flashpoint that seems like a good recruit casually mention that you’re recruiting and send them a friend request. Then just invite them along to stuff with other guildies and see if they like the atmosphere.
As an officer of The Iron Hand, I would say our main problem is sifting through the vast numbers of people who only wish to pvp or pve and find that small little niche who do wish to roleplay and not be trolled for wishing to spend their time in game doing so.
When we do find that market, you find that it is much smaller than those who prefer other aspects of the game and also, there are a vast number of guilds all wanting to appeal to the same players for the same reasons, they rp and we feel we have something worthwhile that we can offer them. You find that people get tired of constant recruitment messages in general chat and in the trade channel and yet, seeing a large number of Iron Handers all together roleplaying in one place can also be off putting, especially if you are from a different guild or are unguilded.
I find the best way to recruit people is not only to use forums of a certain other MMO that a lot of us used to play, but also to use roleplaying forums and also open invites to the community in game to allow them to join us in our rp events. Even if people are guilded and don’t wish to leave their guilds, they will be able to find good rp and would possibly want to come back for more when we hold other events. Of course, the absolute winner is if we manage to recruit to our guild from those events. But time will tell which way is the best way