The East Coast Gaming Conference held their annual t-shirt contest for their 2019 event and this is the design I submitted. I took inspiration from the 80s and used bright, vibrant colors and an older television. No copyrighted images could be utilized so I decided put the focus on gamers as a community rather than any one console or company. The rules outlined that only four colors could be used so I went with a simple color scheme. The name of the conference as well as the abbreviation “ECGC” were also to be featured in the design.
I drew out the illustration by hand before vectoring the image using Illustrator. I colored the illustration using Photoshop. The East Coast Gaming Conference font was supplied.
When it comes to Social Media Management, there are a variety of sites and techniques that can be utilized to best meet the end goal. Depending on your area of interest, you might find certain sites more valuable than others. This week I decided to interview Leo Flounoy, videogame streamer for PrideStark Gaming, to get his take.
I asked Leo about the social media channels he used related to his interests (gaming and gaming related content/media) and he responded with: “Mostly Facebook, Twitter and Instagram! Reddit is another great source, but I find that utilizing connections between those three I mentioned before tend to lead me everything else. I’m always following new pages just to make sure I get all the info possible”.
Leo spends on average somewhere around 20-30 hours each week on his Social Media Marketing depending on the responsiveness of their users. If it’s a particularly busy week, Leo commented, “They’ll hit you up ALL hours of the night so sometimes you have a SLEW of things to tend to as soon as you wake up!”. This definitely shows that many social media campaigns need to account for the schedule of their users,especially what times of day they’re the most active.
When asked about how he engaged his visitors to participate and share his content, Leo answered, “I believe that when it comes to engaging visitors to participate, it’s so important that they feel like they’re part of the community you’re trying to build! We as people direct questions, pay attention to trends and push those things further! Combining that with community events and giveaways that are incentives for sharing and participation and people are much more likely to play a major part in things when they know there’s something in it for them too”.
I continued by asking Leo how this engagement benefited both him and the company. Leo expressed that visitors that are introduced to fun and new content would be more likely to return in the future. “Happy Visitors are directly related to the number of Return Visitors a site or group has. Talking to your user base on a regular basis through posts, responses and polls keep you directly informed on the overall consensus regarding the company!”.
On the flip side, I also asked how this engagement could be seen as useful for his target audience. Leo had these key points to say, “One of the major things an audience wants is to feel close to your group or company. They want to feel like their thoughts and work are important to YOU and that YOU are paying attention to what they’re saying in hopes that it might help shape an already good product (hence the large user base) into something even BETTER and along the lines of what they want!”
As you can see, active social media engagement is useful for both the Social Media Marketer and the user base. Content that is thoughtful, creative, and fun will be more likely to keep visitors interested and eager to see more. Being open with your audience and responding to useful feedback is another way to make sure your social media channels are thriving.
What other tips and tricks have you seen in regards to social media campaigns and how do you think they vary across different interests?
