Tutorial to Quickly Make Images for Twitter and Other Social Network Posts

Posted on November 6, 2015 by magicrat_larry

It is proven statistically that images improve viewing and interactions of social posts. So to help you get those images made there is a, completely amazing, and simple to use tool on the internet that will help you improve your social media footprint. Meet Pablo…

By default Pablo will load with a quote. So The first thing you will want to do is edit that. To do that you simply double click the text. You should then see that you have a few options to edit both your text itself and the formatting of it.

Here is an explanation of each of the functions that can be done when editing the text.

This is a drop-down that will allow you to select a font type
Choose to bold your text or not
choose to use italics or not
Select font size
Choose alignment of the text
Choose Font color

If you want to move the text around the image you can do that by simply placing the cursor over the text and not double clicking. You can then hold the left mouse button down and drag the text block around until you get it into the best position for your image.

On the left hand side of the page is a list of available stock photos along with an option to upload your own image. The stock images are nice but there is not a ton of them so using google images search to find great photos and such is a great option here to keep this tools life-span going far beyond the use of the stock photos.
Above the image you have chosen is an effects bar with a few options to make it even more unique. Contrast will help with some images to make the text standout even more. Blur is good if you simply want to get a good color behind the text with a blurred form. Black and white is just that, it will turn the image into a black and white image and give a dramatic feel to it.

On the right hand side there are even more options to customize your image. There is a shuffle Quote button to get another default quote populating the text. There is a secondary text toggle to turn on another text block on the image. Here is an example of the Secondary text in action.

The secondary text has similar options as the main text and can be drug around as well to get a great layout. The custom logo option allows you to turn on another image to overlay the current one with. You can see here that I put my profile photo in the corner of the image.

As you can see you can use the two sliders to change how the logo looks. One changes the size, the other rounds the corners. This allows you to make images that are very complicated and interesting looking without having to install any editing software at all. But wait, there is more!

At the bottom right there are option to choose different shapes for the different social networks that work best with different sized images. They are labeled well and are very much self explanatory. Really use these to your advantage, it will make the image look better for the social network you are posting it on.

There are also options to share your image right now, and download the image to your computer. Both are great. I tend to use both depending on if I want to do any more processing on an image or not. Usually Pablo produces images that are good to go right off this page so really feel free to post them from this page.

As you can see, Pablo makes creating images for your posts so easy that there is no reason to not have more images in your posts. It will help you look better and be seen more often. Good luck and happy posting.

7 Ways to Effectively Promote Your Indie Game

Posted on October 18, 2015 by magicrat_larry

Promoting an indie game is an interesting thing to accomplish. I am in the midst of learning it myself. Here is the rundown of what I have so far that is of major help to begin to build a community and get interaction with potential fans.

1 – Website

Most people do not try to get through life without a home, and neither should your game. You need a location to drive people to and a website is where you want them to land. This is a place where you are in control, it is your world, your happy place. It is filled with why they should love your product. It should be the goal to get everyone in the world to here.

What should you setup? It should look like your product. Right now we actually setup a WordPress site with a theme that we could customize and make look like Violent Sol Worlds. It does not take much and you have a good location for your potential fans to begin to hover around learning about your game.

To make it look like your product you will need a logo, screenshots, and important content that makes people feel a part of the game. This is where the real work lies. It takes time and effort to generate good stuff for the website. It pays off to do it though, and the earlier you put this together, the longer is sits on the web gaining momentum for your eventual launch. Create your webpage early and update it often with new and exciting things about your game.

2 – Personal Blog

This one is not as intuitive and making a website for your game, but is incredibly effective in driving people to it. Start blogging as yourself, not as your game. This is completely separate from your game, this is you talking about your life, your loves, your hobbies, your work. What this does is it allows you to put out things that people can relate to. It widens your net beyond your game.

Why do you need a wider net? Well it is simple, if you want to be successful, YOU have to be successful, NOT your game. If you are truly serious about your game, you will have many opportunities to plug your content in your personal blog and suddenly you are linking people to your website to see your game by talking about coding a physics engine, or AI.

This also allows for you to change pace, and blow off steam. Often times in-game development you will get frustrated. It is amazing how just writing about something will make you feel better. Plus, many others that are trying to do the same thing will relate and turn to potential consumers of your content, which, in part, is your game.

3 – Twitter

This is like the Doom shotgun, it is the finest utility you have for marketing to actual people on a steady basis. Sure the content lasts like 8 minutes, but it is quick, clean, and targeted. You should create Twitter accounts for yourself, and your game. Each one should be tweeting things that attract people. You need a personal one that is different from your games because you should be promoting your blog as well as your game content with that one. Your games account should be tweeting only about the game.

The key to twitter is consistency. Don’t just tweet like once a week. Spend the 15-30 minutes every day to queue up like 6 tweets that will go out throughout your normal work day. You can use Buffer for that, it is nice, simple, and easy to use. Get in to a good habit with Twitter and you will be amazed what you accomplish.

If you are interested in more things I learned about Twitter during my first year of game marketing go check out – 5 Things I learned About Twitter in a Year

4 – Facebook

Facebook might seem dumb at first for a game, it did to me. But it is like a happy medium between a website and Twitter. It does get a slightly different crowd and it is easy for people to share your content just by clicking a button. Our Facebook page for Violent Sol Worlds was created late in the marketing game so we missed this boat a little, but it is a location people will engage in and promote your game socially. Do not ignore the power of Facebook to drive shorter, quicker content for longer periods of time than Twitter.

5 – Reddit

Here is a simple, quick, and easy driver of people to anywhere and everywhere. Take a second to go to Reddit and see what it is, a simple link to a site and an up/down vote. Yes, you choose a sub-Reddit and simply post links with a nice title and it does the work. People will come to your link and it has the shot of going viral on Reddit.

This is a somewhat of a hidden gem for me. I ignored it for many years then just recently tried it for game traffic and was amazed how it worked for us. It is again, not the golden arrow of marketing but it does allow for you to at will get some form of traffic to new content about your product when you want and need it.

6 – IndieDB

IndieDB is a large community of indie game developers with their studios and games posting there to promote their products. The interactions there seem light, but the traffic that shows up to news, or new images cannot be ignored. You should create a landing page there and join that community. It is just another way to cast a larger net and does not take an amazing amount of effort to maintain.

I found that images are powerful, videos are not so powerful. So simple screenshots and a news article can drive you up in the rankings and get more people to care your game exists. We started our IndieDB site early thinking it could be the home for Violent Sol Worlds, but it is not a good spot for that. It is a great addition to your marketing campaign though and should not be left out.

7 – Kickstarter/Steam Greenlight

These two are the elephants in the room. They are awesome marketing machines. They both have a community that is massive. They also are customer oriented events. The thing about these two is that they are events. What do I mean by events? They will take up a massive amount of time to get up and launch. Ours is in the planning stage now and nearly ready to launch for both Kickstarter and Greenlight and we have worked on them for about 2 months now.

They are worth it. Once you get something you want to market on a scale larger than your own website and blog you should put these together, but remember schedule out about 2 months of work here.

Conclusion

There are many more things you can do to market your game, no doubt. The one thing to remember is that you should cast a large net. Don’t just market your game, market yourself. This allows for you to say much more than my game is awesome. Your game is simply your product, and often times people need more than that. If you can show that you are an awesome person, that is enjoyable to listen to and read about, people will be more likely to buy your game. People like to connect and support others who seem like real, quirky, people. Be yourself and good things will happen.

Wish I Had More Time

Posted on August 13, 2015 by magicrat_larry

So I have been busy as can be. We are speeding up toward Kickstarter and Greenlight and it is a lot of work. I hope it is all worth it. I just wish I had more time to do this blog better justice. It is fun writing to the world and seeing if people are listening the the ramblings.

I spend most my time now marketing and such for the push. the blog just kinda falls off because it takes time. It is sad that some of the most quality things you do take a lot of time and often do not get as much bang for the minute as other less quality interactions. People are interesting, I suppose they have little time too, so places like Twitter and Facebook are easier and quicker, but there is still something about having something larger than 140 characters to read and not just clicking a like button on a photo.

The world is getting so fast that even our interactions are fast and less meaningful. Sometimes I wish we had to slow down and do things a bit differently. Well, I am off now. Gotta interact with people in 30 seconds or less. 🙂

If you have not seen the game I am a part of here are a few links…

Facebook – Like us on facebook

ViolentSol.com – Homepage

IndieDB – Indie Games Community with news, screenshots, and video

Twitter, the Best Mobile Game Ever!

Posted on July 17, 2015 by magicrat_larry

I’ve said it to many people and I get the same response of laughter every time. “Twitter is the funnest mobile game ever! ” Why does everybody laugh? To me it is really true, Twitter is a very addictive and fun mobile game.

Why do I call Twitter a game? I think it has all the elements of a game. It has a large open world to explore, multiplayer, goals, rewards, and even disappointments. Twitter takes the game to the next level, where Facebook just touched the surface. Twitter made it fast paced, exciting, and very interactive in nearly real-time. Twitter turned the social networking experiment into a very huge Social MMO where everyone is attempting to contact everyone else and get as many interactions as possible in like 8 minutes or less, how exhilarating.

Let’s take all the game-play elements and explain them.

Open World

Twitter is a massive world, you can sit there and search many different areas of it and see nearly endless content that is quick, and entertaining. You can find anything and not have to read for hours, but just 140 characters at a time, or even just look at pictures. So this world is vast, diverse, and tailors to many kinds of peoples mindsets for gaming.

Goals

Twitter is very much goal oriented. You are motivated to create content, and try new things to reach the rewards that we detail in the next section. It is highly likely that you will end up putting a lot more thought into your 140 characters than you ever imagined.

Rewards

It will tell you in real-time when somebody noticed you and the part of the world you are creating. They can favorite you, which is like telling you that you rock. They can retweet you, which is like broadcasting your content to their part of the world. The holy grail though, is the follower. If they follow you your empire grows in power and strength.

Multiplayer

It is social, every bit of the world was created by another person. So every interaction you have in that world rewards another player, or disappoints them. There is not single player mode on Twitter. You cannot help but reward anotehr player with either a good interaction or a terrible one. You choose what you do to them and how. You can follow others, or gain a following yourself.

Disappointments

Twitter has its highs and its downs. This makes for a great story, not a conventional one, but a great one none the less. Followers bring you great joy. But the negative comments from some can hurt you. The posts that get no interaction what so ever really are a downer. Plus the dreaded unfollow. Oh man there is nothing worse than somebody leaving your tribe of followers.

Conclusion

When using Twitter make sure you see it for what it is. It truly is one of the greatest games created of all time. It is pure, simple, and genius. Play it and enjoy. Join me @magicrat_larry