Building an effective, engaging and sustainable Social Media Policy for

HMGS

Historical Miniatures Gaming Society

How to tie together all the disparate threads of "Web 2.0" to work FOR the society, to assist in

fulfilling our objectives

Broad Brush Long-term Goals

Maintain a three conventions a year schedule Make conventions financially sustainable and increase attendance Increase our membership Promote our conventions correctly Stay within our budget Communicate with current and potential membership in a more direct and timely fashion

Customer Wishes

To attend the best conventions in North AmericaAccess to gaming, shopping, and the social element.

Fulfilling Customer Needs

Need to overcome negative perceptions HMGS and Politics HMGS losing money HMGS conventions at dumpy locations

Need to promote the positives associated with gaming: Camaraderie Gaming Shopping “Getting Away”

Cost Drivers

Due to recent hits, HMGS budget for promotions is reduced. We must adopt promotional methods that are effective yet almost cost-free. Social media-based marketing is extremely effective at promotion, yet is almost cost-free

Strengths and Advantages

Within the miniatures hobby, HMGS brand carries recognition. HMGS events are very colorful and can be promoted correctly in many related internet communities we haven't tried … boardgaming, miniatures, RPGs, history fans, railroading, etc. HMGS has three conventions that are widely known and widely reported. HMGS has a large body of volunteers that are enthusiastic and creative.

Strategy Find the social media channels that we need to build

momentum with Build a positive message to promote across several

channels, ignoring recent events. Develop a network of allies and other groups putting on

game conventions– network with them, make them feel part of a wider community.

Aggressively promulgate message repeatedly over several social media channels.

Use in conjunction with, not as a replacement for, traditional pamphlet and brochure marketing.

Next Steps of Action Survey the marketplace for existing social medial channels that have to do with gaming in general:

PodcastsBlogsFacebook pages

Target the channels that would maximize our exposure among the broadest possible spectrum of possible future convention attendees and HMGS members. Form relationships with podcasts and blogs that would assist in getting our message out.

FACEBOOK

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. As of January 2011, Facebook has more than 600 million active users. Users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common interest user groups, organized by workplace, school, or college, or other characteristics. A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace.

Currently, there is a “HMGS page” on Facebook. It is not owned or run by members of HMGS (the entity formerly known as HMGS East).

Strategy:

Create a HMGS Official Facebook Page. Do not confront the current owners of the HMGS page on Facebook, but link to it.

Populate the “related links” section heavily, as thereIs a respectable amount of miniatures players, Companies, and wargame clubs on Facebook right now.

Invite every HMGS member you know to LIKE and/or Join the HMGS Official Facebook page.

Twitter

Twitter is a website, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., which offers a social networking and microblogging service, enabling its users to send and read messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the user's profile page. Tweets are publicly visible by default; however, senders can restrict message delivery to just their followers. Users may subscribe to other users' tweets – this is known as following and subscribers are known as followers or tweeps (Twitter + peeps).

All users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, compatible external applications (such as for smartphones), or by Short Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries. While the service is free, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

Since its creation, in March 2006, and its launch in July 2006, by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained popularity worldwide and is estimated to have 190 million users, generating 65 million tweets a day and handling over 800,000 search queries per day. It is sometimes described as the "SMS of the Internet".

• Establish an official Twitter account for HMGS.

• Post aggressively, at least one or two times a day. EvenIf you don’t have content, RE-post other “tweets” even about other conventions, this will build a sense of community and a sense that HMGS will promote other conventions just as much as they promote their own.

• You may have to assign twitter to one or more people, tokeep the momentum going. Microblogging is a powerfultool when handled correctly.

• Establish unique #hashtags that sort posts about HMGS Conventions for the reader, like #ColdWarsCon and #Historicon

HMGS Website

Ideally, a website that maximizes social networking connections should be interactive and engaging, with fresh content on a recurring basis that (very important) people will WANT TO SHARE with other people.

At the very least, a HMGS website should have social media tags on EVERY page, so that the very important message of “When is the next HMGS convention” can be easily shared with many people.

Taking it one step further, I could see easily replacing the static page model we have used since, well, forever, to a more active and connected Content Management System like Drupal or Joomla or something like. We need to add hobby news, links from member blogs, links from other slide shows, RSS feeds, and a host of other content creating automation.

Strategies:

Add more Dynamic Content: Blogs, Feeds, Twitter Feeds,Social media feed buttons. Connect to OTHER media Content, like HMGS member blogs (there are quite a few).

Alliances with other Media Sources