Continuing to find and save interesting twitter threads that can be useful for the game design community, with this thread TIPS ON marketing a game on Twitter
Original Twitter Thread: IPS ON marketing a game on Twitter
Edited Twitter Thread: IPS ON marketing a game on Twitter
·A few things I’ve learned about marketing a game on Twitter. #gamedev #Marketing #advice
1. Retweeting your own tweets is good, but only to a point. The longer ago the tweet was made (or last RTd) the better.
2. Building off previous tweet, writing tweets that are timing specific (i.e. a new patch, a specific event, etc) have a shorter RT lifetime and cannot be recycled as many times.
3. Conversion rate of tweets to your call to action is often low on Twitter compared to other platforms. This includes wishlisting. Twitter is at best good for reach, but the quicker you get your audience off Twitter and onto Discord and/or a mailing list the better.
4. Speaking of which, always have a call to action. I sometimes do this in a self-reply but I’ve found that less effective than having it all in one tweet. That said, tweets without a wishlist link tend to have less engagement (at first) than ones without. It’s a tricky balance.
5. Social media marketing is a moving target. In 6 months all of this advice could be completely irrelevant.
6. Social media marketing is bad for your brain. Doing it every day can help in certain cases but I’ve also found doing it too often can be detrimental and drive off some of your audience to boot. Make the decision that’s right for you and right for your game.
7. All of what I have to say here could be a steaming pile of crap (for you). For you and your game, you might find more success doing the exact opposite.
8. Replies to your own tweets and Quote-RTs essentially bump your posts which can be even better than a normal RT. Some people disable RTs and will miss the normal RT post recycling.
9. Another (perhaps better) alternative to tweet recycling is recycling the content of it. In many cases it’ll be a screenshot or gif. Content recycling is so important. In short, it saves you hours of content creation and tweet drafts. Time is money and opportunity cost is real.
10. Marketing and PR is HARD. Whole businesses are built around this. It’s once again an opportunity cost thing. Time you spend marketing your game is time you could’ve spent improving the game. Seriously consider pulling together a budget to outsource this.
11. Building on 10, marketing affects your bottom line more than anything else. Any feature you add that doesn’t have an obvious affect on the marketing is eating into your marketing budget. Games can be improved post-launch, but if you don’t make enough money you can’t do that.
12. Should you promote on personal or official (company/project) account? Which has more reach? Usually it boils down to follower count but it can really depend on WHO follows & engages with your tweets. Some people prefer to follow personal accounts. You can capture both.
13. Using an account to promote anything involves posting a lot. You will frequently lose followers because you’re bound to post stuff that turns some people off. The churn tends to average up over time. I’ve lost as much as 20 followers in a week without a clear-cut reason.
14. Some clarification for 13, this will not always be true. It depends on how quickly your core audience finds you. I’ve seen this settle out over time but we’re all at the mercy of The Algorithm. As with any of these, YMMV. Just be prepared and don’t get too discouraged by it.
15. Why RT/QRT your own tweets? Most people will never see your tweet. Period. Twitter is vapid by nature so lots of tweets from people you follow will never cross your feed, and pretty much no one goes out of their way to visit profiles directly.
