Advertising Discussion

[maukamauka]

Hi! I wanted to open this thread as a place to talk about advertising zero.minr.org, and what would be the best way to help grow the server.

I know that there's currently a few advertising methods being used, such as pages on planetminecraft and other forums and lists, some YouTube video trailers, and shoutouts in a couple other public places on the internet.

I'd like to see if we could come up with some other reasonable ideas for promoting the server, as I feel like minr could have a much large active playerbase than it does because of how high the quality of the server is.

I'll start the discussion with a couple ideas:

Externally, there's a couple of pay to advertise options that I feel might work for minr, if someone's willing to dish out the money. In particular, YouTube's Adsense that allows video ads to play before some videos, and twitter's promoted tweets system both seem like viable options that could reach more new players, and remind old players about the server.

Internally, there could be a system to increase the number of players who vote for the server on websites like planetminecraft. For example, a link could pop up every time you want to start the daily challenge, or those who vote get to play a special map. If incentive doesn't sound like a fun idea, there could just be a pact or challenge for a group of active minr members to remember to vote each day. Voting would increase the server's rank, and increase visibility overall.

Another internal idea: organize a YouTube channel, make promotional, parkour gameplay, special event documentation, or simply entertaining videos. There's probably enough active members to keep a channel alive through contributions and working together. If it's successful and grows, it'll serve as another powerful advertising tool.

With the summer coming up, I feel like advertising is a really important topic that needs to be discussed. Would love if you guys could give your thoughts on these ideas, and contribute any other advertising ideas you have that you think would help to grow the community in some way.

 

[MobotMan]

As long as it doesn't interfere with the server (as with your vote to play a map idea) it would be fine. I feel like something like that would be similar to a pay to play idea, which we don't want. Perhaps players could be prompted to vote for the server after completing a map, as a way to show that they liked it.

 

[Srentiln]

personally, I'm against the youtube ad one. If I were to see a server advertising like that, I'd put it on my "never visit" list, as to me it reeks of as much desperation as advertising it in the chat of another server.

 

[CreepaShadowz]

Just gonna put some of my thoughts that I have had for a while around the idea of growing zero's player base. This may seem a bit of a rant/tangent.

Spoiler: If you want to read it...

I don't that advertising is the issue. I think that it is fine, and we probably get at least 20 new players joining on the weekends.

I think where we struggle is player retention. It is fairly common to see a new player come on, and then leave forever within half an hour.

Now I know these ideas have been tossed around before, but for the sake of the argument I'll put them here.

We need to keep players around for a little while longer, so they can really get into the server. The difficulty mindset is one of the biggest obstacles that I think potentially holds back this server. Some maps that greenies consider ridiculously easy are a fair challenge to those less skilled. While we can thank Zath for the recent influx of easier maps (no offence there, they are amazing), I feel we need more of these. Our difficulty system is weighted towards the yellow-orange end of the spectrum, and the difficulty there is unthinkable for some players. There should be no minimum difficulty requirement (even if people just imagine one) for a map to get into the FFA. Players that feel like they are making progress will stick around longer.

Also, Spawn, FFA and FFA+ is just too complicated. This especially applies to our current spawn, which is very overwhelming for new players and does not intuitively indicate to the player where to go. I think the Spawn and FFA should be merged into one (and since there is being a new FFA under constructed, this should probably be something thought about). Also, get rid of the FFA name. Again, it isn't intuitive to what it means ("I don't want Free-For-All, I just want parkour!"). The FFA+ is probably a bit of a stretch to include as well...

Supporting groups and allowing players to find each other easier is also a bonus.

I think we should address these issues on the server before pushing for more players.

 

[Chillers]

This is not an easy server. Sure it's fun, it's a challenge but it's also rage inducing. Players do not tend to stick around for long if they have no patience or perseverance. We don't really rely on a large player count to keep the server running as we are completely opposed to donations and privately funded.

In regards to advertising what i would like to see personally:

• More players comments about the server in our public threads, why they love it and the community.
• More video reviews showing some features of the server with showing solutions.
• Players voting more

We try and limit the amount we keep pestering our players to do things for us, we like keeping the server simple and not cluttered with rank colours etc.

 

[maukamauka]

So, to bump this, what I'm seeing is:

- Don't want to add any pay to play - ish features.
- Don't want to do ads on youtube/twitter as they'd look too desperate and in-your-face.

- Want videos of the sever, and more voting.

To summarize, I think the youtube channel idea is looking most promising, with friendly but not forceful reminders to vote looking as a good idea as well so far. Any other thoughts? And how can we go around getting these things to happen?

 

[Srentiln]

We at one time discussed the idea of a minr youtube channel where anyone could upload videos of the server. That idea crashed when we got to the topic of how to control login access of it, heh

 

[rickyboy320]

Upload submissions could work.
Added a voting banner to the forums to at least remind people there's a page where can be voted.
Not sure how to do that on the server without being annoying and spamming a message every hour.
(Although that is a possibility, sending a message to one specific player after having played 1 hour, which resets every day).

In my experience the current voting place is the best place to vote, as google seems to respect the page quite well (ranks #2 on google search 'parkour server' for me) and it doesn't have the 'big-server' syndrome. PMC and other trackers generally have too many servers with too many votes to get any advertisement out, so voting there wouldn't help much. We seem to be going on a right track now, having 20 votes within about 2 days. If we can keep that up (and especially at the start of a new month) we can reach the 50-100 new players each day as we had last winter.

 

[Drahmee]

Could we make it super simple for players(or just greens), when they log in, something like: "If you love Zero, vote us up above zero HERE!" (With link embedded)

 

[Chillers]

Could add a mandatory message at spawn.

 

[Drahmee]

Chills,

I never go to spawn, but I guess I might be in a small majority of those who don't.

Weird question. Can you make signs at spawn that create a link (in chat) to each voting URL?

 

[Chillers]

Chills,

I never go to spawn, but I guess I might be in a small majority of those who don't.

Weird question. Can you make signs at spawn that create a link (in chat) to each voting URL?

Most players will go to spawn to leave maps, and yes we can do that.