RolePlayGateway: WeBlog!

As the admin of the site, one of the primary roles that I play is to drive people to the site and ensure that they have their needs taken care of so that they can become permanent members.  There are a few ways to do this, and while some are costly, others are actually ridiculously easy, and you can help on a daily basis. If you remember a post on our blog a few months back, you’ll recognize that we placed a fairly heavy emphasis on links.

In today’s web, links are what correlate to value and importance, and the search engines calculate where RolePlayGateway is placed according to how many links we get, and from what websites. (A link from a website about role playing games will make us turn up in the results for searches about role playing games, while a link from a real estate site does exactly the opposite - it makes them think we’re about real estate.)

Ultimately, you can make my job MUCH easier by actively seeking out links from anywhere you can get them.  If you’re a member on another forum, link to us in your sig, even if it’s just a little text link!  You can get all fancy with signature graphics if you like (please share your RolePlayGateway graphics with us!), but any link is great.

I’ve found a great article that I think covers a few of the more advanced points of becoming a highly effective link builder, if you’re interested in taking on a more pointed task, as opposed to just linking to us casually. I’m also free to answer any questions and lend any assistance that I can, so just shoot me an email, IM, PM, or even phone me and I’d love to work with you.

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A few months back, Rob MacDougall posted an awesome article on the origins of modern roleplaying. It’s definitely worth a read!

RAND analysts revived the practice of serious wargaming in the 1950s, but they moved away from miniatures-style gaming with model ships and airplanes towards more free-form political games where participants role-played world leaders in crisis scenarios. Herbert Goldhamer, in RAND’s Social Science Division, ran four major “role-playing crisis games� between 1955 and 1956 that will sound awfully familiar to anyone who’s ever slain an orc. Players sat around big tables covered with maps, rules, tables, and dice. They took on the roles of various world leaders, while Goldhamer, as game director, played the role of “God� or “Nature,� devising the scenario to be played, adjudicating player actions, and introducing chance events.

This is the same move away from hex maps and miniatures that Gary Gygax and the Daves would make in the late 1960s. Instead of having a strictly limited set of options–move this piece or that piece, fire this missile here or there–players in these games could order any action that might be taken in real life. Briefs for Goldhamer’s simulation games read a little like the back of the Red Box D&D set I got for Christmas 1980: possibilities were limited only by the players’ imaginations.

There’s a lot of information that’s new to me in his post, and it has been a great experience looking over the rest of his blog. Go check him out!

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Yep, so that’s basically it. Write a post on your blog about RolePlayGateway and include a link to us, and you’ll be entered into our contest to win a copy of BioShock on your choice of platform. Trackback or comment with a link to your story to enter.

We’ll be picking the winner September 14th, so get on it!

Oh, and you can get a demo copy of BioShock for the PC over on the forums. Enjoy.

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We’re glad to announce that we’re considering putting on a podcast full of juicy roleplay and humorous jabber. Please give us your feedback, questions, comments, and we’ll be speaking to you soon.

Also! The RPGateway staff had a meeting Thursday night, and got a lot of things accomplished. There are some awesome items being put on our agenda that all of you members will really enjoy.

On that note, we’d all like to say that we’re sorry for being so slack on updating the blog, things have been pretty crazy for all of us, but look forward to great things near in the future!

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There are so many threads on RPGateway, and so much to do. Many people will sit on the page and refresh, browse, refresh - a very inefficient method of looking for new posts and keeping track of them. One way to optimize your browsing experience on RolePlay Gateway is to utilize our RSS feed.

Most modern browsers, like Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, are able to subscribe to RSS feeds almost automatically. For example, in Firefox, look in the address bar for a small funky looking icon.

See it? Click and drag that onto your bookmarks. You’ll now have a live feed of recent posts from RPGateway available right there in your browser. It will update automatically, too!

For more information on how to use Live Bookmarks in Firefox, see Mozilla’s Feature Page.

RSS Readers
RSS readers let you subscribe to and read any number of RSS feeds at any one point in time. Here’s a list of a few that you might utilize!
Google Reader - my personal favorite.
Alesti

( Sorry my list is a bit short, I found Google Reader and loved it, and haven’t looked for others! )

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While marketing RolePlay Gateway, one of the things we considered was the “virality” of our approach. Viral marketing is any marketing technique that induces Web sites or users to pass on a marketing message to other sites or users, creating a potentially exponential growth in the message’s visibility and effect. We’re going to guide you on the road to a truly viral campaign.

A successful viral push can be launched simply by following three simple rules.

1. Don’t spend everything you have on a single campaign.
2. Don’t rely entirely on one vehicle of viral marketing.
3. Be different from everyone else; stand out.

While we’re not nearly viral enough, part of our success so far has been the evangelism of our passionate users. And there you have it, one of the most important keys to successful viral marketing:

Passion:
Users who are passionate about your service, your community, or your site. They will propagate, they will evangelize, and ultimately will generate more passionate users who will do the same thing for you. Dawn Anfuso calls these members Boomers - and it is important to not ignore them.

Make it easy for your users to share. Make it hard for them NOT to share. Add a feature on your site that encourages them to send an email to their friends about the service. Add blocks where they can copy and paste code straight to their social profiles on sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo. Jeanne Jennings wrote an amazing article on Optimizing the “E-mail This” Marketing Opportunity, and I’d recommend you read it and implement the things you learn from it.

Widgetize:
On that note, we arrive on one of our most powerful vehicles for viral marketing: Widgets. The list of sites that you can infect with widgets are endless. From iGoogle to individual sites, widgets encourage users to put your tool on their page. Be sure to incorporate other techniques here: Include encouragement to share it. Make it easy to post elsewhere and share.

One of the items that RolePlay Gateway could utilize to great success is the concept of game trailers. Many of the games on RPGateway are text-based, and have no real graphics. However, most of these games have amazing storylines, storylines which could be utilized to hitch audiences, or at least entertain them. Flash-based videos, or trailers, with pivotal content, captivating video and audio, and viral marketing elements such as “Email this!” or “Share This”, would be an amazing leap forward. Take a look at how YouTube’s video player works. Such trailers could even be uploaded to social networking sites, like YouTube and Google Video, and shared to millions of users with a touch of viral marketing magic.

Juice It Up:
Include your URL everywhere you go. Facebook, MySpace. Everywhere. This generates user authority, even if the site you are on has nothing at all to do with your target market. Cross sections are a beautiful thing, and even if you don’t get a drop of link juice in comments, market saturation is a very important, yet delicate, part of viral marketing.

Maintain a presence on every social networking site you can sustain. Extend your campaign to all of them. Create social groups for each of these sites, and publicize them. The more targets you hit, just like investing, the less committed you are to that particular market. Your assets are distributed, and while the workload may be unfathomably difficult (keeping up with so many social networking sites sucks… that’s why we have ProfileLinker), the potential for success is incredible.

Reward:
Another option is to provide tangible rewards for marketing. This can be in the form of prizes, such as in a contest, or to individual users. Incentives are very powerful, and drive many users to promote where they’d be otherwise apathetic. Things can be very simple, such as giving them tokens or credits, to very expensive, such as providing real cash per referral. This is probably the most effective, albeit expensive, method of encouraging users to infect others.

Don’t Stop.
Don’t set these actions in motion and then hope they work. Get involved. Comment on profiles. Reply to messages. Enhance your viral effect. Make it tangible. If users can see that there is a real person there, they will be a lot more enthusiastic and encouraged to participate, and your viral marketing campaign will be more successful.

Other Resources!!!
Web Marketing Today has an amazing list of resource articles that are sure to help you build your campaign.

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We’ve recently entered SearchBoy’s Facebook Contest, with a chance to win $3,000 for being the winning group.

Here’s how you can help:

1. Join the Help RolePlayGateway.com Win $3,000 From SearchBoy.ca Facebook Group.
2. Invite all your friends.
3. Blog about it.
4. Profit.

If we win, we’ll be able to do a lot of great things for RPGateway with the cash. Show your support and help us win!

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I just wanna give a shout out to all my lovely poodles out there, and the bunnies too. I haven’t forgotten ya. You all may know me under many names, but there is only one that I am known with the most singularity. I am the incredulous SinfulSoul (or Sin for short), loyal admin and member of the Knights of the Square Notepad that all admins are honorably annexed into. Most important of all, I am the Resident Pimp of RPGateway. As you can see, this post diverges from the standard form - that is what I do. I am the strange and unknown, the new and unfathomable. I am Jack’s Limitless Imagination.

Well, that is me and that is how I dine. I don’t know about you guys, but after a big meal I like to fall unconscious against my pillow for a good 20-30 hours. Good night world.

~SinfulSoul

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RolePlayGateway is a great place to roleplay, talk about roleplay, and simply hang out with other roleplayers. Of course, it’s not all roleplay all the time, but it sure is a lot of fun, whether you roleplay or not. However, not all is perfect — people still turn away from the community in favor of other ventures.

Why is this? Sometimes the claim is that the community is too new to roleplaying to be worth someone’s time. Other times, the claim is that the community is too advanced for new players to jump in and play. These are diametrically opposed views, so which is accurate about RolePlayGateway and the roleplaying community?

Both.

Wait, what? Yes, that’s right, the roleplaying atmosphere of RolePlayGateway is both too advanced and too close to a beginner’s level for many people. This is one of the problems that plagues us right now, and there are a few solutions.

It is imperative that first and foremost we focus on the community and the user experience. We need to be sure that everyone enjoys themselves and the activities they participate in while on RPGateway. The RolePlay Gateway Staff play a very important role in this, but perhaps the most crucial role is player by the average members of RPGateway. These members, collectively, are what define the community and ultimately, what make the experience a memorable one.

At RolePlay Gateway’s Welcome Desk, new members get the chance to introduce themselves and to be welcomed by existing members of the community. The members do an amazing job at welcoming these users, and while they could do a better job at capturing the interest and captivating them in discussion, we do tend to get an excellent turnover rate for people who post these welcome threads.

There’s always the ongoing issue of bad apples and trolls who seem to be dedicated to turning the community into a flame war, and some of our new features should help members report these items to moderators more quickly. For the most part, our moderators are dedicated and passionate about their task, so again, the members have the most power here, in reporting offensive posts and potential powderkegs to the moderators using the functionality provided. Knowledge is power, and if you inform the staff of problems, I promise, we’ll fix it.

Moderators additionally have the task of making things happen, such as organizing events that keep the whole community involved - such as the infamous word games (and other random non-roleplay fun) and more on-topic helpful threads that help people get involved in games. We’d love to see more of this, indeed. But we’d be happiest to see all members giving their most to the community.

The bottom line is that every member plays an integral role in the great machine. If you complain about something yet aren’t willing to help work toward a solution, you don’t belong here. Be passionate about what you do, and the entire roleplaying community will benefit.

This applies not only to our online community, but to all things that you do. Take it to heart, and you’ll be a better person.

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One of the questions we get asked most often as administrators is “How can I help?” Unfortunately, this is a very broad and open-ended question. It’s really great that people actually want to volunteer time and energy to support RolePlay Gateway in its endeavors! The tough part is determining exactly what it is they can do to help.

Good news! There are a few items which we’ve determined are extraordinarily beneficial to our community, and they’re things that everyone can do. Without further ado, we present the RolePlay Gateway List of Things You Can Do to Help Them Become the Most Awesome Community Ever list:

Use Other Websites.
Yep, you heard us correctly. Use other websites and forums! We’re not selfish, we don’t want to keep you all to ourselves. How does this help? Easy! By participating in other places, you get the chance to see and believe the reasons why RPGateway is so great. You’ll have the opportunity to invite your good friends who don’t know about us yet.

Link To Us.
Google (and other search engines, but they don’t matter) likes to see when people link to us. In fact, we like to see people linking to us. Add a link in your sig, not only will it tell other people that you enjoy RolePlay Gateway, it will tell Google that you like RolePlay Gateway. Not only that, but it’s classy.

See? Isn’t that just absolutely gorgeous? xD
Thanks to Cat for her wonderful graphic skills.

And we’ll be absolutely ecstatic if you link to other parts of our site, like individual RPGs, or interesting topics, throughout your posts.

Don’t Be A Walking Billboard.
Well, if you want, you can. Just be aware that this will make people discount you - you’re going to be labeled like one of those people dressed in the Lady Liberty costumes on the side of the road during tax season…

Really, just participate. Don’t spam. Make friends. Enjoy life. Eat Cookies. Erm…

Kou, where are my cookies?

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