Community Dev Newsletter 🤠

Alright, well. January has felt like several months in one. Yay February! (Hello, I'm back!)

This month's newsletter dives into:

• Good writing and its usefulness as a community manager
• A copywriting activity
• 26 game marketing related job postings and 12 cool resources

Copywriting & Community

It can feel difficult to train a skill when there's so much out there to learn. So let's start small! Tiny steps every newsletter to level up a skill so can get more confidence or serve as a reminder to keep us sharp. 💪 I'll practice with you.

The first skill we'll dive into? Writing! Drawing from the book Everybody Writes by Ann Handley, let's see how we can improve our communication skills from the keyboard.

"Whoa, wait, Victoria" you say, fingers trembling in fear. "Isn't copywriting a marketing and advertisement thing? I'm in community so does this really matter to me??"

Well obviously I disagree since I'm writing about it here. In the end, so much of community's job is to be able to write well. It'll be useful whether it's for advertising or for diffusing a heated conversation. And we only get better when we draw from all different fields and perspectives!

According to Everybody Writes, quality content consists of 3 things:

• It's useful to the reader
• The writing is based on creativity and data (AKA you're not making sh*t up)
• It connects with the reader (AKA their point of view)

In particular, I want to highlight these ideas from the book (but definitely read the full thing for context and understanding!):

1. Think about the reader! How do they understand your content? What questions are they coming in with? Is the content hard to understand? Are the sentences too wordy? Spend time in the Discords, Reddits, understand their language, etc.
2. You are gonna have an ugly first draft. That's okay. The real magic happens when you rewrite and edit.
3. Simplify your writing. This doesn't mean you have to make it stupid. It means removing redundancies and fluff.
4. Remove buzzwords and jargon. She does discourage "Frankenwords", which are two words smooshes together like 'listicle', but I get in games we just.. are really in love with that e.g. 'roguelike'. However it does bring a good point that overall to a new reader this could be meaningless and confusing!
5. Edit!!! Make sure it's easy to read with white space, bolded words when needed, short paragraphs, etc.

And the best way to improve your writing? By writing! Just like anything - art, programming, jumping to conclusions - you get better at it the more you do it. Don't get me wrong, it's going to suck sometimes, but the best advice I can give anyone is to just.. write! It doesn't even need to be a lot - it can be a daily tweet that lives in your drafts for months, a couple of sentences about your day, a little thought about the latest drama (god do we have a lot of that going on.)

As long as you're writing, you're building that habit.

Community Activity 📝

First community activity of the year!!! WOOOO!!! Every month we do a new skill testing exercise or discussion question together.

The question:

Feel free to email me back with your answer - I always respond to them! My answer will be in the next newsletter. If you have future questions you'd like to ask the community, let me know.

Community Chatter 💬

Here are the interesting and helpful things I've seen this past month.

General News

• ​TikTok removed the ability to search for specific hashtags in its Creative Center tools
• Twitter launched a 2024 Marketing Calendar for content ideas along with some marked as "X Featured"
• Ogilvy released a 2024 report on culture-first social and developments in social media marketing
• Typeform released a report about data collection and tips on how to do it better (good read for any devs using forms for playtesting or community satisfaction surveys imo!)
• Great Vox article about the burden of self-promotion and how so many of us have to do it now

Games Resources

• GameDiscoverCo has a database of pitch decks​
• The GDC 2024 State of the Game Industry report is out
• ​Steam Daily Deals now have an automatic invite if you reach their eligibility requirements (before you had to be invited - Daily Deals were part of how Among Us got a huge boost so this is cool!)
• TakeThis/University of York have an anonymous survey about dark participation game players are regularly experiencing and their mental health impact; folks who work in Trust & Safety and community are invited to participate
• Apparently 10% of US consumers use Apple Arcade weekly​
• A very long but very good essay: The Tremendous Yet Troubled State of Gaming in 2024​
• Masahiro Sakurai released a new video about marketing and showing the actual game

Community & Marketing Game Jobs​
​These are not endorsements.

• ​Amazon Games - Community Manager (London, UK)
• ​Arkadium - Director of Marketing, Games (Remote)
• ​Blumhouse Games - Marketing & Social Media Director (Los Angeles, US)
• ​CD Projekt Red - Customer & Market Insights Specialist (Warsaw, Poland)
• ​Chucklefish - Community Manager (London, UK)
• ​DOTDOT - Part-Time Community Manager (Remote, New Zealand)
• ​Dreamhaven - Senior Community Manager, Secret Door (Irvine, USA)
• ​Elsewhere - Marketing and Community Manager (San Francisco, USA)
• ​GitLab - Senior Manager, Social Media (Remote, USA)
• ​midnight munchies - Part-Time Social Media/Community Manager (Remote)
• ​Niantic - Associate Social Media Manager, Pokémon GO (San Francisco, Remote)
• ​Obsidian Entertainment - Video Producer (Irvine, USA)
• ​Offworld - Social Media Marketing Manager (New Westminster, BC, Canada)
• ​Reach - Social Media Manager (Remote, UK)
• ​Reach - TikTok Video Editor (Remote, UK)
• ​Riot Games - Sr. Director, Brand Management - VALORANT (Los Angeles, USA)
• ​Rovio - Community Manager (Hybrid, Stockholm)
• ​Second Dinner - Senior Community Manager (Remote, US)
• ​Secret Mode - Brand Creative Manager (Hybrid, Leamington)
• ​Spellgarden Games - Part-Time Community and Social Media Management (Remote, Germany)
• ​Sucker Punch - OPERATIONS - Community Manager (Remote, USA & Canada)
• ​thatgamecompany - Senior Manager, Live Community (Remote, USA & Canada)
• ​The Pokémon Company International - Associate Influencer Marketing Manager (Bellevue, USA)
• ​TikTok - US LIVE Creator Growth Specialist, Gaming (Los Angeles, USA)
• ​Toukana Interactive - Creative Content Specialist (Remote for now)
• ​Wooga - Senior Influencer Marketing Manager (Hybrid, Berlin, Germany)

As a small ending note, I wish there were some deep insight or motivation I could give to folks in the face of all the layoffs and industry weirdness, but I don't. I just hope you're able to take whatever time you can to figure out the next steps. Reach out to people for support.

See you next month.

❤️

Victoria

meggy @dogmatic_shorty It’s so sad when you have to tell the person you love that you’ve already seen the post they’re showing you 7:14 AM • Jan 24, 2024 9023 Retweets 105833 Likes Read 215 replies

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