Recruitment and Retention – Use the community

[DMaximus 1,045]

I’ve enjoyed this theme week and I think there’s been some great suggestions from @rjfryman @animal74 @Proto and others. I’ve also enjoyed the personal testimonials many members have shared. There’s also a lot fantastic graphic work. I hope the recruitment team uses a lot of this work from the community members to help in their recruitment efforts. Reddit has definitely been the best location to advertise so far. Although it seems like we’ve exhausted all our subreddit options. Maybe we can look at some of the subreddits we haven’t posted to in a while and repost to them? I also like @sonnet’s suggestion, let’s maybe look more at the role playing subreddits and try to recruit role players, instead of just hitting it from the hockey side. One thing I know nothing about is trying to use Search Engine Optimization to help with passive recruitment, but that could be another possible way to increase recruitment.

 

I think retention is more important than recruitment. Retention is not only how we keep new members around but keep existing members more engaged. Increasing engagement is the primary way to grow the community and make it more appealing to everyone. For me the best way to engage our community is to solicit them for assistance. Just like how the graphics that were made this week can be used for future recruitment efforts, we should be engaging everyone to help with other facets of the site. I saw a response to @rjfryman’s post that said something like we want to automate things and add things to the portal, but it’s low on the list, so it probably won’t happen for a while. Why not reach out to the community to see if people can help with creating new improvements? I know the portal is fragile, so maybe there needs to be groundwork laid down before you let users assist in coding the portal, but there’s a ton of free collaborative tools available that can be used. Why not throw code up on github and let people work on it on their own? The current developers could still approve the final changes, to help prevent the site from breaking.

 

An example would be the automation of the VHL Fantasy league and adding it to the portal.  Sounds like a huge task. Why not ask the community to help? People could earn TPE for contributions even if they weren’t ultimately used on the site. Just like how people submitted graphics for the recruitment efforts this week, they earned 6 TPE for their submissions, even if their submission won’t be used in future recruitment efforts.

That same concept could be used for anything else on the site. Want someone to create a video tutorial? Ask the community for submissions, give them TPE for their submissions (likely replacing a media spot), pick the best one and use it, or use all the ideas, combine them and have a job paid person on the recruitment team make a new video. Want someone to create a hype video for the upcoming draft? Ask the community for their submissions. I guess what I’m saying is that every week can become a theme week in some way. Maybe not double TPE each week, but give the community tasks to focus on to produce helpful content.

 

When people feel like they have a stake in the community, they are immediately more engaged and more passionate about the community. Let’s get more people more engaged all we need to do is ask.

 

Some other unrelated improvement suggestions that may of may not have been taken from others.

 

1)      Create a schedule for the season well in advance. I don’t know why the dates for the entire season can’t be laid out months in advance. It always seems like events just pop up right before they happen. If there was an official schedule, it would be much easier to prepare for and hype up events. For example, the trade deadline was announced 4 days before the deadline. Why couldn’t we figure out when the trade deadline was at the start of the season? We know we sim 2 game dates every real life day, so we should be able to figure out the length of the season and know when the trade deadline is going to land, know when the playoffs are going to begin. And we could set dates for the playoffs to end. Even if there were multiple game 7’s people would be able to work within the schedule to get the sims completed on time.

The schedule would also help generating anticipation for other events like the World Juniors or the World Cup. Announce the dates well in advance and let people prepare for them. It seems like events like that are easily overlooked because they just seem to appear out of nowhere. What if we laid out a schedule at the beginning of the year for how the WJCs would play out, like this:

4/7 - 4/12 WJC GM Hiring process

4/13 WJC GM's announced

4/15 Final Roster submission

4/19 Index Created

4/21 - 4/22 Round Robin Round

4/23 Semi Finals

4/24 3rd place game

4/25 Finals

Just announce that at the beginning of the season and let people prepare for it. Same thing with the VHL/M leagues and any other events. If the concern is that people might not be able to hit those dates exactly, then reach out to the community for more assistance to hit those dates.

 

2)      Create a game of the week. Special treatment is given to a single game in each league each week. I’m not sure exactly how this would look, but maybe a slow reveal of the sim results for that game, like a person posts what happens in blocks of 5 minutes. Or posts until a major event. Give time to let the interested people comment about the game. Again, the community could be leveraged if the concern is there’s not enough people to make this a reality.

 

1,005 Words

Will claim for 2 weeks and theme week bonus.

[animal74 1,605]

I mentioned something similar in my media post about the schedule. Would have really helped me as a new player (and even now!) to have a schedule laid out that's more clear. Even for 2 or 3 seasons. When I was just starting last summer, my development was really hindered when I went on a lengthy vacation. I still was getting used to everything, I wasn''t sure what was going on, I was doing everything from mobile and I missed a lot of TPE.

[Baozi 1,635]

Content is good. Scheduling has always been on and off type issue. At times we can adhere to it and other times it doesn't work as life gets in the way. Certainly having predetermined dates that we absolutely followed would work better overall. Adding VHL Fantasy to the portal would be good, among other things as we lean more and more towards the portal. Some good thoughts here.

 

Formatting works, though it is somewhat of a huge wall of text to read. I would probably spice it up with some coloration as well just to break up the monotone color. 

 

7/10

[DMaximus 1,045]

2nd week claim