VHLM and Recruitment are so bad right now

[Daniel Janser 2,211]

3 minutes ago, BOOM said:

If you let me advertise on Brazzers etc, I'm sure I could bring in some sleazy new users. Let me know! 

Especially if you lead with Booberry's HOF article 

[Grape 734]

27 minutes ago, Beketov said:

I have voiced an opinion that I wonder if we should push into a space that ISN’T hockey dominated videos, into other gaming and media content

iirc the TacTix ad ran a while back in like the S60s was very successful. I feel that pushing ads for content like his, mainly franchise mode, team/player management type content, would work really well, no matter the sport. Lot of Madden franchise mode content makers that we could push to and could see similar success with.

[Beketov 9,089]

37 minutes ago, Grape said:

iirc the TacTix ad ran a while back in like the S60s was very successful. I feel that pushing ads for content like his, mainly franchise mode, team/player management type content, would work really well, no matter the sport. Lot of Madden franchise mode content makers that we could push to and could see similar success with.

The thing even with that one is it got us a huge spike in registered users but a relatively tiny spike in active users. Like I think we retained 5 people out of 300 or something.

 

The content of the ad matters a lot and since the content isn’t usually super clear when we are focussing on those franchise mode type of audiences we get users thinking the league is either a GM league or some type of EASHL thing or something of the sort. They don’t understand quite what they are signing up for.

 

I would honestly, even for the same price, take an add that gets us half the registrations if it means that the read or the audience is better and we can retain twice as much. The bump in users matters a lot less than the bump in people that stick around.

[Spartan 4,507]

3 hours ago, Beketov said:

The thing even with that one is it got us a huge spike in registered users but a relatively tiny spike in active users. Like I think we retained 5 people out of 300 or something.

 

The content of the ad matters a lot and since the content isn’t usually super clear when we are focussing on those franchise mode type of audiences we get users thinking the league is either a GM league or some type of EASHL thing or something of the sort. They don’t understand quite what they are signing up for.

 

I would honestly, even for the same price, take an add that gets us half the registrations if it means that the read or the audience is better and we can retain twice as much. The bump in users matters a lot less than the bump in people that stick around.

I don't know how many people saw the last few ads that we ran on YouTube many months ago, but recruitment had done a great job in providing a script that remained consistent across the channels we promoted on. It clearly explained that this isn't a BAP or NHL league, that it's a text based product, and the other key aspects of this league. I don't mind if we avoid NHL 24 youtubers to avoid their crowd if that's the issue here, but I want to be clear that the script that had been used was very clear about what our league is and isn't.

[Motzaburger 1,590]

Same old problems, same discussions, same old solutions - this hockey experience fundamentally hasn't changed, but something's gotta give.

 

Look at the keeners around trying to make improvements to the site, getting shut down left, right, and center (this hasn't changed either - I once tried so hard and only got so far, but in the end, it didn't even matter).

 

Listen to the members, especially those who want to make a difference. These are the most engaged, informed, and caring members. Take risks, make changes, adapt, improve, repeat. And make this experience engaging again, don't try make people be engaged in the VHL (that comes with the former). 

 

This place will be long dead before we know it if overhauls don't start happening  

 

 

 

 

 

[Doomsday 4,141]

14 hours ago, McLovin said:

Daily posts is wiiilldddd nobody is expecting that from the team, if it were a weekly thing that recruitment could use as job pay for their player then it's another story. With how VSN has to write 500+ words or a graphic a week for their 8 TPE, recruitment should have to do something similar in terms of getting word out there and getting people in. Have the graphic designers of the recruitment team make a real quick standings post which would literally take like 30 mins start to finish, submit that to the twitter and insta and claim their weekly TPE. Have the people who don't want to do graphics spend like 30 mins of their week just going around reddits or forums spreading the word, have them all collab on an ad and use some of the dono money to elevate the ad onto services that'll bring people in. There's plenty of solutions the recruitment team can do quickly and effectively, hell I managed to come up with those suggestions just in the span of writing this so there's no excuse as to why there isn't more effort going into getting people in. 

 

Lil edit here as well covering the second part of that post. It's much, MUCH easier to put a bunch of text onto a copy paste template for trades, signings, hell even score sheets than it is to make a player signature graphic from scratch. Again, 30 mins tops start to finish.

 

What if a specific recruitment team member had a set day to post on? Say, if you theoretically have seven people, that's one member to post for every day of the week, which gives each person another week to create content. Something like that could stagger content and mean more consistent posts.

[N0HBDY 1,127]

This isn't the covid era anymore

[Spartan 4,507]

43 minutes ago, Doomsday said:

 

What if a specific recruitment team member had a set day to post on? Say, if you theoretically have seven people, that's one member to post for every day of the week, which gives each person another week to create content. Something like that could stagger content and mean more consistent posts.

There was a schedule, but there's been a lot of turnover since. I believe Mubbles, Thad(?), N0H, AJW and Ricer all left the team. It's currently Moon, Subject, Triller + V2 as graphics, Tet and VLG as new hires. I think.

 

I still don't think that daily social media posts are the line we need to draw or the standard we need to set. Reduce the frequency of the posts, raise the quality of our posts. Brainstorm what attracts user's attentions. These are in all essence advertisements - so you need to put some thought into what attracts users instead of just leveraging someone's PT with some special effects. Slow down the posts if needed. Once per week is FINE. Just understand the purpose and give it commensurate effort to execute.

[JigglyGumballs 1,056]

[Triller 1,684]

35 minutes ago, Spartan said:

There was a schedule, but there's been a lot of turnover since. I believe Mubbles, Thad(?), N0H, AJW and Ricer all left the team. It's currently Moon, Subject, Triller + V2 as graphics, Tet and VLG as new hires. I think.

 

I still don't think that daily social media posts are the line we need to draw or the standard we need to set. Reduce the frequency of the posts, raise the quality of our posts. Brainstorm what attracts user's attentions. These are in all essence advertisements - so you need to put some thought into what attracts users instead of just leveraging someone's PT with some special effects. Slow down the posts if needed. Once per week is FINE. Just understand the purpose and give it commensurate effort to execute.

I'm not part of recruitment.  I just try to help out from time to time with graphics cause it is a nice thing to do.  Recruitment is not a fun job from my perspective and not something that I would want to volunteer my time to do regardless of how much or how little TPE is involved.  We already have half the user base claiming to know how to get this place flush with long term members so as long as they all put in the work because they care about the longevity of the league, everything will be fine.  I've seen some people in GEN chat saying they have avenues they could explore but simply haven't.  Someone even said they have a huge youtube channel that they could advertise on for free and I guess just decided it didn't matter till now.

[Spartan 4,507]

Just now, Triller said:

I'm not part of recruitment.  I just try to help out from time to time with graphics cause it is a nice thing to do.  Recruitment is not a fun job from my perspective and not something that I would want to volunteer my time to do regardless of how much or how little TPE is involved.  We already have half the user base claiming to know how to get this place flush with long term members so as long as they all put in the work because they care about the longevity of the league, everything will be fine.  I've seen some people in GEN chat saying they have avenues they could explore but simply haven't.  Someone even said they have a huge youtube channel that they could advertise on for free and I guess just decided it didn't matter till now.

For what it's worth I called out those folks for not applying to the recent hiring thread. I've seen Blues say the same as well - people like to complain or offer solutions, but won't readily put in the work. I've brought their names to Moon for him to reach out to them if they're willing to help. I assume that they are if they're offering in gen chat.

 

But your contributions are appreciated and I'm glad you helped out on your own accord. I'll also back up my own words and assist in the recruitment server when it comes to figuring out some plans for future efforts.

[Triller 1,684]

Just now, Spartan said:

For what it's worth I called out those folks for not applying to the recent hiring thread. I've seen Blues say the same as well - people like to complain or offer solutions, but won't readily put in the work. I've brought their names to Moon for him to reach out to them if they're willing to help. I assume that they are if they're offering in gen chat.

 

But your contributions are appreciated and I'm glad you helped out on your own accord. I'll also back up my own words and assist in the recruitment server when it comes to figuring out some plans for future efforts.

It is just unfortunate that someone who was enjoying what they were doing and putting in the effort to get things going and trying something new ended up being straight up called out for quality of work.  Not lack of work or going IA but because they considered the work bad.  Makes you reconsider the time you are volunteering to any of this.

[Nykonax 1,564]

I feel like daily or any social media posts are not the way to go. Like people have said it's just spamming irrelevant content to a few people who are autopilot scrolling. If you want to advertise I feel like it needs to be done to a large audience who is actually paying attention, which is why reddit and youtube have been so good in terms of numbers, you have a targeted audience who are already paying attention and are actively reading/watching, so they are actually hearing what is said and get interested.

I think that recruitment needs to be much more focused on figuring out this method, instead of trying to manage social media. Recruitment should be looking at new avenues (new channels, twitch streams, forums, podcasts, etc), as well as figuring out how to improve retention from these avenues, since that's the biggest problem with them right now. Obviously it's been tried (new scripts and whatnot), but surely we can do better, start tracking some sort of analytics (views, retention rate, whatever), and work to improve those. I think investing effort into this instead of just shotgunning 1000 random instagram and twitter posts to the void is much more worthwhile.

If you do want to do social media though, I think the focus needs to be on either tiktok/yt shorts/ig reels, since I have seen like random roblox football leagues or like minecraft hockey leagues making posts about the league, their history, recent games, and getting relatively high interactions. This can be a task for someone on recruitment to look into and see what's making this work for them.

Anyways, why don't we just hire @badcolethetitan as recruitment head since he has a marketing degree, and then we just blame him for all the problems.

[rory 1,941]

6 minutes ago, Nykonax said:

then we just blame him for all the problems.

Can I just do this part

[Spartan 4,507]

1 minute ago, rory said:

Can I just do this part

2 pay weekly for daily blame coles

[rory 1,941]

8 minutes ago, Spartan said:

2 pay weekly for daily blame coles

and a special coloured forum and discord role, ty

[Spartan 4,507]

3 minutes ago, rory said:

and a special coloured forum and discord role, ty

VHLE GM is pretty special and rare!

[Rin 138]

I certainly don't envy the task of recruiting players-- we're essentially trying to hit the middle of a Venn diagram consisting of "sports enjoyers" on one side and "roleplaying nerds" on the other.

 

We live in a niche within a niche

[BOOM 8,806]

I remember the last time I tried to help....I don't think it did a thing tbh! I think the fact that they were both Panthers would have just confused actual NHL followers. I'm sorry.

 

[KaleebtheMighty 1,539]

I joked about it, but maybe wearing a T-shirt for the VHL while in airports while I travel for work?

Edited November 16, 2023 by KaleebtheMighty

[Ricer13 2,816]

I’m just gunna add my two sense, not that it matters but I wanted to share my experience as a previous Recruitment Team Member.

 

When I was apart of the Recruitment Team I had a hard time dealing with the lack of commitment from other team members. I put together every YouTube drive, every Reddit attempt (even in the current state of how things are with the VHL and Reddit), I also did a lot of posting on social media, put together Instagram ads, etc. I honestly earned the TPE I claimed for that job. 

 

I did not feel the rest of the team put in nearly the same amount of effort and it got frustrating to the point where I’d blow up on the team and then everyone started to chip in and help. This would only last a few weeks and then fizzle out again, rinse and repeat. This is the real reason I stepped away from the team. 
 

Recruitment should be a job that’s held by people who don’t hold any other jobs. It takes commitment and requires a lot of personal time to make it successful. Now juggle being a GM and any other job a team member might have on top that. 
 

I agree with the overall message that Zetterberg is trying to get across, despite the delivery. Recruitment has no focus and has become a real problem and this problem has been festering for a long time. I hope this leads to positive change for the team and for the league.
 

 

[AJW 2,190]

 @Zetterberg this whole time you’ve been yapping you could’ve made quality graphics for the Instagram to post. You’ve got talent man, if the Instagram isn’t what you think it should be then make something for them to post. Instead you started a thread where if a new member joined today and read through this, they’d think our league is hot garbage and not want to stay.

 

And for everyone else including myself, we need to step up our game in content creating. Do you put the best effort into your work or do you put just enough effort in to earn the TPE? You should be proud of what you post. The line is drawn so low nowadays that even I make shit content just to get my TPE for the week. People gotta step up in their own work, step up by interacting to more forum content, step up by not blaming others for the entire community’s suffering. You can’t control others you can only control what you yourself does. Y’all gotta get off the damn discord too, we’re a forum league not a discord league. Recruitment’s got a job to do but we as the community gotta do better.

 

Edit: my name’s pink but I ain’t on recruitment anymore fyi. I’m just a high bastard who scrolls through the forum.

Edited November 16, 2023 by AJW

[Spartan 4,507]

28 minutes ago, AJW said:

And for everyone else including myself, we need to step up our game in content creating. Do you put the best effort into your work or do you put just enough effort in to earn the TPE? You should be proud of what you post. The line is drawn so low nowadays that even I make shit content just to get my TPE for the week. People gotta step up in their own work, step up by interacting to more forum content, step up by not blaming others for the entire community’s suffering. You can’t control others you can only control what you yourself does. Y’all gotta get off the damn discord too, we’re a forum league not a discord league. Recruitment’s got a job to do but we as the community gotta do better.

I'm fine with the first paragraph telling Z to step up and help. But this about calling out everyone else to make better content isn't it. If people can meet guidelines, they get their TPE. Updaters deny stuff that isn't up to par. We can acknowledge that people's PTs may not be high enough quality to go on instagram to advertise the league. Our standard for awarding TPE for PTs isn't that high. If people want to meet that bar, they're free too. But that's definitely not the responsibility of the community to complete tasks for recruitment to yoink for social media.

[twists 412]

22 hours ago, Triller said:

It's true, some people try to approach certain situations with tact and understanding that these are real people who owe you absolutely nothing and may have other responsibilities they are dealing with and are doing their best under the circumstances.

 

And yes, it would be crazy to suggest that.  What are the required goals, what kind of skill set should someone require for the job?  How much time must they be engaged in this job to meet yours or anyone's standards? Merit has to be based on realistic parameters and if this is sounding too much like a real job you wouldn't even qualify for than you'd be correct.

Damn I didn't think defining goals and having to meet them is such a terrible thing, but once again this is the VHL I guess lmao

[Zetterberg 863]

44 minutes ago, AJW said:

this whole time you’ve been yapping you could’ve made quality graphics for the Instagram to post. You’ve got talent man, if the Instagram isn’t what you think it should be then make something for them to post. Instead you started a thread where if a new member joined today and read through this, they’d think our league is hot garbage and not want to stay.

Unfortunately I’m away from my computer until this weekend otherwise I absolutely would’ve made a mock and I’m still trying to figure out a way to do that. As for the thread I think it was a success regardless of what you think of me or how I’ve acted it’s brought up a discussion that I and many other believe is necessary on recruitment.