Hey guys, welcome to our brand new knowledge sharing series called Talks with Experts. Our aim is to open discussion of free to play experts from various game studios, share knowledge, tricks, troubles and see what happens. Join us and discuss hot topics in game design, art, marketing, programming, game analytics, QA and many more. Our first episode will focus on Social Media with our Social media manager Eva.

Tell us Eva, why do you find Social Media at Pixel Federation so important?

Social media is important because you, as a game developer, need to keep the conversation between you and your players going and Social media is the best tool to do just that. Players can share their thoughts, problems, suggestions and if you, as a social media specialist or community manager, are there to answer it basically in real time, you are building loyal community that will keep returning to the page and to the game itself. I think this is the basic role of social media and in my opinion the most important one.

Cool, and what are the secret ingredients of successful social media profile?

Well I wouldn’t call them secret. :) The most basic ones are the obvious ones - keep the content regular, use beautiful visuals and texts that are specially tailored for the kind of audience you have (because every game is different and require different approach in style and communication). Also, the not-so-basic ingredient is creating content that is directly linked with the game. As a social media specialist, especially for free to play games, you need to realize that for example a Facebook page and the game are not two different and separate entities, they have to reference each other so that you can communicate with your players through many different channels and ways of communication. Well and another secret is to always keep up with the latest trends in social media but only choose those that are relevant for you.

And how do we measure the success of the social media?

For us, I think it is definitely a good feedback regarding the content in the game and on our social media channels. We always try to create space for our players where they can communicate and share pieces of advice with each other. And then of course there are the basic and regular KPIs like post’s reach, engagement, traffic, brand mentions, audience sentiment, and so on. We strive to create content that is liked by our players so they can interact with it and these numbers very accurately represent if we succeeded or not. There is also another aspect to it - all these shares, comments and reactions increase the organic reach. Yes, even though many companies think that organic reach is already dead, I don’t think it is.

Interesting. When it comes to creating content, which platform do you prefer to use?

Personally I prefer Facebook because it is the platform where we have the biggest number of players and it is a brilliant tool for creating conversation and engagement . We are lucky to have a very active and engaging Facebook community that loves to interact with posts on Fan Pages, which is very nice and it feels rewarding (or not, if you mess up the game update). :) Players even create their own Facebook groups, often lively and with thousands of members, where we are trying to be present as community managers, talking to them, instantly collecting and providing feedback, et cetera. Obviously we have different strategies for each social media channel we manage. But one thing stays no matter what - as a company we like to be relaxed, fun and authentic so we are keeping these aspects also in our communication with our players throughout all social media.

And what are the responsibilities of a social media specialist?

Ooo my god, there are so many, but bottom line is always the communication with our players. That is the most important thing in both community management or social media world. But this also entails the content management, production and post-production of videos and blogging.

And now it’s your turn guys. If you are one of us, join the Facebook group called Free to Play Game Developers and feel free to start a discussion about Social Media. :)