Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Week 11: Part 1

For email newsletters, I could show the winners of any previous tournaments of a certain game. Usually in social media, businesses like mine tend to tweet about the winners of the tournament they just competed in. Tournaments are often collected in a series such as Wednesday Night Fights in California or Xanadu in Maryland. This is so they can continue to advertise the tournaments they hold so the consumer knows what it is and when they can go. Advertising a tournament series and the winner of each one in my newsletter would basically say "if you come to this tournament, this could be you and you could win this prize money!" I could also advertise the upcoming tournaments that I could potentially have before they start again including dates, prices of entry, etc. Some announcements such as upcoming majors and supporting team members going to tournaments would be nice for fans of my business and increase potential sales in entries for tournaments mentioned. With all this information, I would send out the newsletters weekly. This is because If I were to do this everyday, I would have nothing to talk about since most major information such as future plans and tournaments happen randomly and would be a wasted effort. Plus, emailing nowadays is not the same as instant messaging. People don't always check their email every single day, so information in daily newsletters would quickly become irrelevant and harder to follow. Once a week will help the consumer make plans for the tournaments mentioned, and will only take a little time out of their week to read. While Facebook and especially Twitter are best for announcing upcoming events, this could also be useful to consumers who don't use social media and especially the people who enjoy my business.

Monday, October 29, 2018

Week 10: Part 2

Really, the only category I woul blog about is competitive gaming. I would usually tend to talk about just the video games since gamers are my target audience. I would want to blog about upcoming events for various video game tournaments for ARMS and whatnot. The ARMS community would enjoy the stuff I write about especially in a day and age where ARMS barely has any exposure at all. However, Smash Bros. is a humungously popular franchise especially since the newest game, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, is coming in around one month. Before the game's release, I could talk about potential competitive features and torunaments or analyze the new characters being added to the game. After the release, however, I could talk about my impressions on how each character feels, what stages will be allowed in tournaments, and expermient with the new modes they have added to the game such as the Final Smash meter (a meter that is built up over time to unleash a special move). Either way, my core audience is competitive gamers, especially Nintendo fans, and I will exclusively blog about my thoughts on these things. And if people are interested enough in my opinions, they could ending supporting my business.

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Week 10: Part 1

Usually, in social media, it makes sense to add a personal touch to a post if the user is the face of the business or to market the true passion of why the business exists. This is usually for personal, smaller local businesses. It helps relate to the customer on what they enjoy about the business. In larger corporate businesses, however, it's usually best to not add a personal touch to the posts because large companies are run by tons of people. The CEO may post on their own social media, but never on the company's. Companies exist to make money and sell, and any post you see from a large company will advertise like it's selling you something rather than expressing how they personally feel. Just because one person feels one way about the company they work for doesn't mean everyone feels the exact same way. Therefore, it is best to sell with a positive vibe about a product despite how the employees feel. 


Monday, October 15, 2018

Week 8: Part 2

I see a lot of eSports teams and businesses use visual platforms like YouTube and Twitter. They always use YouTube to upload the VoDs from their livestreams and announce new events on their Twitter and Facebook. 2GGaming uploads their VoDs on YouTube usually righter after they stream an event every week. They also post on Twitter every few hours in a day, usually to advertise a stream or an upcoming event. This last post they made however was announcing that they are looking for tournament organizers for different competitive games. And even though they over 35,000 followers, they only average so few likes and comments on their posts.

Level Up Series does the exact same thing, only they use other YouTube channels like Body Count Fighting to upload all of their VoDs. They don't post on Twitter or Facebook as often as 2GGaming unless they were holding one of their Wednesday Night Fights tournaments the day of.  Similar to 2GGaming, however, they have a great amount of followers but barely get any traction in terms of likes and comments.

Since Echo Fox is more of a team than a tournament holder, they upload highlight reels and player interviews instead of tournament matches. They pretty much just upload whenever they want and don't really have an upload schedule for their channel. The same goes for their Twitter account. They only upload pretty much whenever they want and when they do, it's usually about a team member's highlight in a game or an update with their business. They have over 90,000 followers and don't get thet many likes or comments, but definitely get more than 2GGaming and Level Up Series. This is probably because Echo Fox involves more games than just fighting games.

VGBootCamp is often involved with major tournaments for Super Smash Bros. as well as their own venue in Maryland. As a result they upload videos on their channel pretty much every day. This is usually for Smash 4 or Smash Melee, and other times Tekken 7, Street Fighter, or DragonBall FighterZ. They also advertise these new VoDs on their twitter page the same day they upload the videos, leaving less room for highlight posts or other ads. They have over 50,000 followers but hardly get any traction on their posts. This is probably because they upload so frequently, the viewer will barely want to see the videos. Still, it's a good idea to upload all VoDs so the viewer can look for it with ease.

By the way, one thing these businesses have in common when it comes to YouTube is their thumbnails. They have the names of the players from the videos matches, the character they used, the day it was streamed, where they are in the tournament bracket, what game they are playing, and what event it is. This is visual communication for the viewer since YouTube only shows so many words on a YouTube video. I too have done this for SoCal ARMS where I made thumbnails for the VoDs of the ARMS tournaments they streamed.

I guess what I can learn from all this for my own business is that I must post frequently enough to keep my audience engaged or at least provide for convenience. It may not gain much traction but that shouldn't be the point of my posts. As long as I have enough viewers on my Twitch channel and the many VoDs I would upload, social media will still be the best tool for my business. 

Thursday, October 11, 2018

Week 8: Part 1

Businesses like X-Tension Gaming pretty much require social media for advertising, especially since most gamers in the world stay online for most of the time in their day. There are many popular platforms for it and I'm going to express my thoughts on each one for my business.

YouTube is definitely one of the best choices. Often times, tournaments are live-streamed and recorded which in of itself generates great revenue depending on the game you're streaming. However, not everyone has time to watch it live, so uploading each match from a tournament as its own video on YouTube is actually useful for those who haven't had the chance to catch the tournament live. Not only that, but it also serves as examples for players to learn from. For example, if I wanted to get better at ARMS, and there is a video of a match between two top players, I could look at what each player is doing and try it out when I play the game for myself. These VoDs (video on demand) generate good numbers too depending on the game and the can get even more popular if the players have exciting matches.

Facebook is pretty good for my business too. I can update my audience with what new events are going to happen in the future and advertise the VoDs or the streams. With the events to, I can invite my audience to come join with the event maker tool whether they want to spectate or compete. 

Twitter is just as useful as Facebook. I can update my audience, advertise my events, VoDs, and streams. The only real differences are that Facebook doesn't have an event maker tool, but a majority of gamers I've seen use Twitter more than any other social platform.

Instagram isn't as viable but still somewhat viable. I can still update my audience and what not but you need to post a picture or a video to make a post. That's not really that big of a deal, but I have never really seen any other businesses like Level Up or VG BootCamp use Instagram, let alone gamers in general. Thus, I feel conflicted as to whether Instagram is worth it for my business or not.

Snapchat is definitely not a good platform for my business. Posts in a user's story only last up to 24 hours and I can't necessarily advertise an event through that. My audience has to know whether a tournament is coming up or not and not everyone will catch the announcement the day it was made. This could actually negatively affect the number of people going to the event or even seeing the posts. Also, I don't think you can use hyperlinks in the posts you make, making it harder for my audience to find the VoDs or streams.

Finally, Pinterest is just as useless as Snapchat if not, more useless for my business. First off, 80% of Pinterest users are women, and while there are female gamers in the world, there are still more male gamers than female in the entire world. Second, Pinterest is designed to show off things like recipes, decorations, etc. I have never seen anyone use Pinterest to update their audience or schedule events and even if I were to, Pinterest would not be the first place gamers would look in to find details for a tournament. It wouldn't make sense to advertise in an area where hardly any of your intended demographic resides.

YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are defintely my go-to choices for advertising. It's no secret that many gamers worldwide use these platforms, so it would be best to reach out to my audience this way. 

Monday, October 8, 2018

Week 7: Part 2


X-Tension Gaming needs members to operate. I believe this will engage my audience because people will often want to get to know the team more. Other real teams like Team Liquid or Cloud 9 usually have interesting personas. Team Liquid has the famous Smash Melee player HungryBox who has many fans, and Cloud 9 had the famous Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player Shroud who also has a lot of fans. Introducing new players in the team will create more advertising for the team as long as each member has decently-numbered fanbase.

(This post is made to be used as an example for this class. I'm not actually going to Atlanta sadly.)

This post shows the audience that their team will be at a big tournament like this one. The audience would want to either go to the event themselves to meet the team or simply watch them live online. It keeps the audience and fanbase updated on what's going on with the team and where they are going to be playing next.


This post advertises the chance to chat with me and to support my content too.  It also shows the audience what kinda of gameplay you would expect to see from me, which creates a chance of interesting the audience and developing a fanbase. Showing support and love for your team is always a good marketing strategy to generate more numbers.





Thursday, October 4, 2018

Week 7: Part 1

Three of the pages I liked were Super Smash Bros., DragonBall FighterZ, and Nintendo. I chose these three because all of them have a passionate community that stay consistent with new updates. For example, Smash and DBFZ could announce a new character and I could share with my viewers who are into those games to show I'm just as passionate as they are about those games. 

The other pages are gaming teams that hold tournaments at various venues across the country. 2GGaming and Level Up hold tournaments in the southern California region making it convenient for my home business to work with them. I could hold tournaments at their venues and bring in more players from my area. VG BootCamp and eSports Arena are more out of state and I could affiliate with them to appeal to gamers outside of California. 

Monday, October 1, 2018

Week 6

Post reaches on Facebook are simply when people have looked at the posts you made, while post engagement is the viewers actually engaging with the post such as commenting or sharing. It's important to know the difference because the reaches will tell you if you are finding your target demographic and engagement will show how many people actually care enough to interact with your facebook page. You can use these "insights," as Facebook calls them, to have a better idea of who your perfect customer could be. With this in mind, you can improve your advertising and understand what your audience expects out of your business. For example, I know that video games aren't just popular with young adults but kids too, so if my insights showed a lot of kids see my page, I could use that and market more towards the kids and the young adults to keep both demographics happy.