Advertising our maps. How do we do it?

[koontz1973]

Just wondering what rules their are if any and how you lot go about advertising your maps.

Every fortnight (or whenever it gets published) every map is in the dispatch with links to every map. I notice a slight increase in traffic the day it gets published. But apart from links in our signatures, how do you lot get people to notice your new maps.

[generalhead]

Great topic. I have the link below my signature, but was wondering the same as you wrote here. The more traffic
we get in the foundry the better.

[koontz1973]

Th links in the signatures are an OK thing, but it relies to much on us posting elsewhere to get those links out to the public. Is their another way without breaking any site rules? I normally send a quick PM to guys n my friends list, but now I have stopped that as most where their for tournies and not maps. One thing I did do for Madrid was PM the top 100 players from Spain (according to the scoreboard). This got me a good response and some nice ideas that stayed on the map.

[Seamus76]

That's a good idea, and what I did for Israel. I really didn't get a response though, but that's not to say I won't keep doing it. I'm not sure if it's breaking the rules, but I try to see who's playing Tribal War - Florida and post a quick note in their chat letting them know if they like the map, or better yet don't, to go and let me know about the new one. I would love to get more feedback, but I also like quality, which is hard to come. Picking the top players from a country is good because you then get serious players who know gamplay and can really help.

Along the same lines, how does CC get more players to the site? Is there some marketing team or something? If not there should be something out there driving traffic.

[thenobodies80]

Along the same lines, how does CC get more players to the site? Is there some marketing team or something? If not there should be something out there driving traffic.

Afaik marketing and things like that are El_Jefe primary activities.

About advertising maps, send pms to some players is fine if it doesn't become a daily routine. In addition I suggest to not use mass PMs, or at least if you send a PM to some players to add them as BBC, to prevent a annoying chain of pms, that usually ends with a report.
Signatures, they are the main way, although i think they work less than in past due the fact that some users abused of them (animated sigs and things like that) and now many people use various ways (phpbb or custom) to not have them displayed.

Nobodies

[Nola_Lifer]

Great topic. I have the link below my signature, but was wondering the same as you wrote here. The more traffic
we get in the foundry the better.

Sometimes I believe that it would be true. I'd feel like quality is better than quantity. If someone is general interested in a topic or area they will make posts. These posts would probably be a bit higher in quantity and the posts would be more consistent. There is a lot of traffic that flows through the FF, so I think the system works.

[Seamus76]

Great topic. I have the link below my signature, but was wondering the same as you wrote here. The more traffic
we get in the foundry the better.

I just thought of a great, and EASY, way to at least track the amount of people clicking through our signatures.

Instead of using the actual URL of my map page, I took that URL and using Googles URL shrinker (goo.gl) I turned it into a tiny-url which I used in my signature instead of the actual URL. Just log in with your google account before you shrink it and you'll be able to come back to goo.gl and track the click throughs. It will also show you where the clicks are coming from geographically, as well as the browser, and some other interesting info. My signature is actually made up of three separate images and urls with no spaces so they all line up. It's not perfect, and has no hits in the 11 hrs since I set it up, but we'll see.

This can easily be done for any links you have and want to track.