It's-a me! Victori-a!

Before we get into this month's activity, here are quick thoughts on the whole Threads-Bluesky-Mastodon-Cohost-Twitter alternative (follow me!) showdown going on right now.

Basically: You don't need to know what to do. Adaptability and agility are the key in social media management, and this doesn't change that. Which one should you be on? Whichever one you like the best so far! Play around. See how the tides change. Or don't touch it at all. These are all baby fledgings apps, and even they are still figuring out their strategy. You have other things to worry about! Try the other social networks instead! Improve your studio newsletter! There are endless things to spend brainspace on. Even if we are desperate for a similar network, we can't rush it. We can let it play out, experiment, and diversify our media forms in the meantime.

Not to say I'm 100% right at all of course! Merely my thoughts as someone who went through the downfall of Tumblr and never recovered emotionally.

But now I'm so excited to let you read the response to the Community Activity!! We have our first ever ✨guest response✨ who is an expert in the influencer strategy field - Clara Sia, New Biz + Senior Influencer Strategist @ Devolver Digital.

LET'S READ.

Community Activity 📝

Every month we do a new community together. Here's the new one!

The question:

Feel free to email me back with your answer - I always respond to them! My answer will be in the next newsletter.

--------

Previous Community Activity 📫

Here was the question from last month.

Question refresher:

Instead of my response, we have an answer from our guest, Clara Sia – New Biz + Senior Influencer Strategist @ Devolver Digital! She's a great friend, smart egg, and graciously sharing her techniques with us.

Her response: I find and meet influencers everywhere they are: on their content platforms, on social media, at trade shows and live events, in community channels, through peers, via agencies, and more. Each avenue has their own rules of engagement, but if you’re seeking them out, you’ve probably already established they should get a review key. Remember to think globally! YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok aren’t always the biggest content platforms depending on region, and the same goes for social media.

Key distribution happens from either inbound requests or direct outreach. After experience, the vast majority of your influencer coverage impact will come from outreach, whereas the vast majority of your inbound requests will usually have little to no coverage impact in comparison. Build those relationships! Also, learn to spot scammers (oh, the many ways).

Here is a non-exhaustive list of criteria to consider in whatever combination makes sense for your launch:

• Engagement size: Channel size has almost no bearing anymore. Look for average video views and concurrent live viewers over 30, 60, and 90 days for games similar to yours. SullyGnome for Twitch analytics is free to use. Remember that covering new IPs will almost always have decreased engagement to start, especially if the channel has a main focus. Throw out extreme data anomalies and avoid channels that make content very infrequently or haven’t made content in a long while.
• Game choice: Look for influencers who regularly play games similar to yours or are variety creators who include similar genres and/or themes. Find the superfans who cover most of your games.
• Personality and influence: Spend some time evaluating a creator’s commentary on games similar to yours and their audience’s reactions to those games. What is the general sentiment? Do you like their communication style? Is the audience very active and engaged in the content? Are they there for the game or the personality?
• Content type: VODs and live streams require different strategies, but there are also many sub-categories that align better to some than others: let’s play (most common), highlights, reviews, news and editorial, guides, top 10 lists, speedrun, interviews and podcasts, art and cosplay, etc. In most cases, stay away from no-commentary “spoiler” channels. Steam Curators have next to zero impact.
• Early adopters: If your game included pre-launch coverage windows for demos, previews, and betas, consider rewarding some of your early supporters with high positive sentiment by including them in your launch access.
• Social media presence: Sometimes an influencer may not have high engagement on their content channels, but have a strong or influential public presence elsewhere that’s worth leveraging.

There’s more to this and nuance in everything, but hopefully that’s a good start!

Community Chatter 💬

Here are the interesting and helpful things I've seen this month.

General News

• ​Annie-Mai's t​​hread of free marketing courses
• Can I even explain what Twitter is doing anymore? No. I rewrote this bullet point 5 times this month because things kept changing. I give up.
• ​Reddit will remove mods of private communities unless they reopen
• Threads from Meta launched to rival Twitter, but it is not available in Europe due to stricter privacy laws
• ​YouTube is adding A/B testing to thumbnails
• ​YouTube released their 2023 Culture & Trends Report
• Google Analytics 4 has replaced Universal Analytics - here's how to switch them​
• ​CMX Summit scholarships are open
• ​Gfycat is shutting down on September 1st

Games Resources

• ​Sara Alfageeh's thread on how to go viral on TikTok correctly
• ​Meredith Hall's thread on tools she uses to manage content
• ​Mat Piscatella's thread on May 2023 U.S. consumer spending on video game content
• ​Toge Productions has opened up internships for marketing/community

Community & Marketing Game Jobs​
​These are not endorsements.

• ​Alderon Games - Junior Community Manager (Remote)
• ​Behaviour Interactive - Social Media Manager (Remote or Flex, Quebec/Ontario)
• ​Behaviour Interactive - Team Lead Community Manager (Remote or Flex, Quebec/Ontario)​
• ​Compulsion Games - Mid/Senior Community Manager (Remote, Canada)
• ​DSG - Social Media & Community Coordinator (Remote)
• ​Flatter Than Earth - Social Media & Community Engagement Specialist (Remote)
• ​Future - Social Video & Community Manager (Remote, UK)
• ​Hinterland Games - Community Manager (Remote)
• ​IllFonic - Social Media Coordinator (Tacoma, USA)
• ​indieBI - Customer Service Coordinator (Remote)
• ​Lumi Interactive - Marketing Lead (Remote)
• ​Mad Mushroom - Communications Manager (Remote)
• ​Niantic - Associate Community Manager, Pokémon GO (San Francisco, USA)
• ​Schell Games - Social Media Specialist (Pittsburgh, USA)
• ​SYBO - Community Manager - (Copenhagen)
• ​Offworld Industries - Social Media Marketing Manager (New Westminster, Canada)
• ​Rebellion - Social Media Manager (Oxford, UK)

Do we like our first guest response??? :D I definitely want to start doing more of them - community is so often a "catch all" title for anything marketing, social, press, and influencer related when in reality it's VERY difficult to even get good at one of these things. So being able to chat with someone whose main work was focused on influencer marketing for so long is great. Thanks Clara!!

If there's anything else you'd like to see in this newsletter, please let me know!

❤️

Victoria

I can no longer embed funny Tweets at the end of newsletters because of course I can't anymore. Lmao.

​https://twitter.com/youngtiddy/status/1676756461643505668?s=20​

^Though I do find it highly amusing that you'll just have to trust me and open a link that has the username "youngtiddy" in it.

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