It’s amazing to think that you can use what is known in media as ‘Web 2.0’ to promote anything you want, it is so easy to use the internet as a marketing campaign for whatever you wish to promote to the mass public.
One thing that gets constantly promoted on the internet nowadays is video games. Almost everyday if not everyday, you see publicity for a video game, whether it be a Tweet, a Facebook post, a review on a video game review site, a trailer that’s been put up on YouTube or a simple advert on any website, someway or another, there’s always promotion for video games on the internet.
Question is of course, what are the Pros and Cons of using Social Media to promote video games? We MadSluggers are still learning of course as MadSlug started up just earlier this year, but so far, these are a few things we have learnt as far as those Pros and Cons are concerned:
Pros:
- You can reach hopeful consumers for your games in ways that old fashioned marketing misses. With the likes of Facebook and Twitter, you never know how much your news will get passed along on Social Media and who will take notice.
- You get more publicity that will help build your gaming company into becoming even bigger (this is obviously something that shows that Social Media marketing is a ‘must-do’ thing).
- Usually, when smaller video game companies like MadSlug start out, a good way to do marketing for FREE is Social Media, you promote yourself and the games you do, and save money/don’t bother spending it at the same time. Not bad, eh?
Cons:
- Whilst Social Media marketing is free in terms of money, there is one price you pay from using it from us MadSluggers’ perspective: it is very TIME CONSUMING. You will have to use every chance you have to put something on Social Media representing you (blog, Facebook post, Tweet, etc).
- If you get carried away with constantly putting the same thing over and over again for a game you have developed, you could end up getting accused of posting what is known as ‘Spam’ , which is not the type of publicity you want to get at all as it will drive people away from being interested in you and the games you develop, and you will be criticized for it.
- Whilst Social Media is a way to build up your company and build relationships with people who would be interested in your company and the games you develop, it takes TIME and CREATIVITY. We say TIME, because, you don’t get mainstream publicity overnight, it takes a lot of time and dedication to do this so patience is a virtue, and CREATIVITY, because Social Media marketing depends mostly on your creative talent, which makes it difficult as you have to constantly keep coming up with appealing and exciting content to try and engage the audience. Without doing this, your efforts to get noticed will be for nothing.
Phew, that was a lot to take in, even for us MadSluggers!
So we’re learning on the job, it’s just like being back at school really, isn’t it…?