Re-rolling: Building an Online Presence

Welcome back to Re-Rolling: A Journey Through Game Design and Self-Publishing, where we discuss the ins and outs of board gaming and entrepreneurship. I’m Michael, and today we’re exploring how to establish an online presence and engage with your business’s community. Let’s dive in!

We wanted to start this entry by saying Josh and I don’t claim to be marketing or social media experts; we’re entrepreneurs learning how to navigate this terrain just like many of you. Building an online presence for a new company can be both exciting and challenging. While we’ve had some valuable insights from marketing professionals, the majority of our learning has come from hands-on experience. One key lesson we’ve learned is that growing your social media presence is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s important to set realistic expectations to avoid getting discouraged. Social media serves as a powerful platform for consumers to validate your brand, understand your mission, and confirm the authenticity of your products. Our journey began with some fundamental questions: What are our goals? How do successful companies build their online presence? What platforms are right for us? How many can we effectively manage while juggling full-time jobs and the other business responsibilities?

Here’s what we’ve discovered:

1. Identify Your Goals and Platform Needs
Before diving into any platform, ask yourself: What are your end goals? We studied various successful companies, not just board game companies but across different industries, to understand their strategies. We looked at their websites, social media followings, and engagement tactics.

2. Platform Strategy
Choosing the right platforms is crucial. Each platform serves different purposes and requires a unique approach, here are some that we currently use and why:

Facebook: Ideal for building brand awareness and engaging directly with customers. The platform’s analytics tools help us refine our posts and track what resonates with our audience. We use Facebook to create game-specific pages, handle FAQs, and foster discussions. It’s a great tool for customer engagement and marketing, though it’s essential to manage issues like scams.

Instagram: Linked to Facebook for easy cross-posting, Instagram helps us connect visually with our audience. Instagram’s business tools, such as Shopping and Insights, are valuable for showcasing products and understanding audience behavior. Regular, strategic posting helps keep the account active and engaging.

Discord: This platform is integral to our future. It’s excellent for team collaboration, client communication, and customer service. We’re setting up servers and channels for different topics, gaming groups, play testers and feedback, enhancing our interaction with the board gaming community.

X (formerly Twitter): Useful for real-time customer service and networking, X allows us to connect directly with customers and industry experts. It’s a platform for sharing updates, engaging in discussions, and building brand awareness through hashtags and trends.

Reddit: We use Reddit to join relevant discussions and share our blog posts (Yes, this one). It’s a goldmine for understanding your target market’s pain points, preferences, and feedback. Participating in community forums helps us stay connected with the broader board gaming community.

3. Content and Engagement
The key to success on social media is not just about promoting your products but also about contributing to the community. So, with that in mind we try to Follow the 80-20 rule: spend 80% of your social media time engaging with others’ content and discussions, and only 20% promoting your own agenda. This approach helps you build genuine connections rather than coming across as an annoyance or even worse a spammer.

4. Staying Informed and Adapting
No one-size-fits-all approach exists for social media. We’ve consumed a lot of material—books, podcasts, and online courses—to understand the landscape better. While we take inspiration from other businesses, we adapt strategies to fit our unique needs and goals.

Here are some other popular social media platforms as of July 2024:

YouTube: 2.5 billion users

WhatsApp: 2 billion users

Instagram: 2 billion users

TikTok: 1.6 billion users

WeChat: 1.36 billion users

Telegram: 900 million users

Snapchat: 800 million users

Douyin: 755 million users

Re-Rolling

In this section we reflect our past actions, decisions and what we may have done differently for better results.

Plan Strategically: Looking back, we often reacted impulsively to new opportunities without fully assessing their impact or alignment with our broader strategy. To avoid these pitfalls and help you succeed where we may have fallen short, we recommend adopting a more strategic approach from the outset. Develop a clear marketing strategy with measurable goals and plan your content and engagement efforts with a long-term perspective. This will ensure consistency and better alignment with your business objectives, setting a solid foundation for future success.

Consistency in Content Creation and Community Engagement: We’ve had some success with community engagement but struggled with maintaining a consistent content posting schedule. To help you avoid similar missteps, we recommend prioritizing both regular content updates and active community involvement. Establish a steady posting routine across all platforms to keep your audience engaged and enhance your algorithmic visibility. Simultaneously, focus on building authentic relationships by participating in relevant communities and contributing to discussions. This balanced approach will strengthen your brand’s presence and foster meaningful connections within your industry.

Enhanced Data Analysis and Leveraging Analytics: We could have used analytics tools more effectively from the beginning. By conducting more thorough analysis of our social media and website metrics, we would have gained valuable insights into what’s working and what’s not, allowing for more data-driven decision-making. To avoid similar pitfalls and help you succeed, we suggest leveraging data analytics tools to monitor performance and understand your audience’s behavior. Regularly reviewing these metrics will enable you to adjust your strategies and improve outcomes, ensuring a more informed and effective approach.

Focused Advertising and Refining Your Ad Strategy: In the early stages, we invested in advertising without fully grasping our target audience’s preferences, which led to less effective campaigns. From our experience, we’ve learned the critical importance of refining ad targeting and experimenting with various ad formats to improve ROI. To avoid these mistakes and help you succeed, start with small-scale advertising experiments to understand what resonates with your audience. Focus on precise targeting and continuously optimize your ads based on performance data to enhance your results and achieve better returns.

Streamlined Communication and Optimizing Communication Channels: We’ve learned the hard way that managing communications across multiple platforms can lead to missed messages and delayed responses. To improve efficiency and customer satisfaction, we should have adopted a more integrated approach from the start. To help you avoid similar issues, implement systems to manage and streamline your communication with your audience. This could involve using customer relationship management (CRM) tools or setting up dedicated channels for different types of inquiries, ensuring a more organized and responsive communication process.

Leverage Social Media Tools: I’ve compiled a list of popular media tools that make it easy to transform your long-form content into shorter posts, reels, and more. These tools simplify the process of editing, cropping, and repurposing your content, helping you maximize your social media presence with minimal effort.

Later
Buffer
Hootsuite
Social Bakers
BuzzSumo
Zoho
Mystorybrand.com

By reflecting on our past experiences and incorporating these suggestions, we aim to continuously improve and adapt our strategies. We hope these insights help you navigate your own entrepreneurship journey more effectively; whatever it is you’re doing.

Join us next time on Re-Rolling as we explore more insights and adventures in the world of board gaming entrepreneurship.

Until then, keep rolling those dice and embracing the journey!