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.