Advertising

You shouldn’t underestimate the power of IRC when it comes to advertising, but be careful or you will irritate channel owners and after all, it is actually against the rules of Quakenet so make sure you get permission from the channel ops/owner before you spam anything.

It is also important not to use colours or bold (blocked by some channels) but to ensure that it stands out for people to see it. A good mixture of brackets and dashes usually does the trick. Make sure you tell people everything they need to know regards tuning in. That is to say, the league name and round, the caster name (that would be you!), the teams playing and a link to the website or stream if more appropriate.

Beyond live advertising like IRC, you can also use websites and in a number of different ways. For example, QuadV has pages on Steam, Facebook, Ugame and Twitter and will often post news to these social gathering sites advertising our upcoming matches. If you are on your own, you can simply post to your profile or “what are you doing” part of Facebook and it will work just as well. You shouldnt also forget the power of sites like Digg or Reddit which can also help deliver many more people to your stream by linking.

Don’t forget to ask the league you are covering, to make a news post on their site about the coverage too, this should be your primary source of viewers and is essential advertising when you are a solo caster. Make sure you get it posted in some form on the popular community sites that dedicate their news to the type of game you are covering. Most will be happy to post something, even if you have to post it in the forum, do it, it will help with gaining more viewers and letting more people enjoy what you have to offer.

Obviously as you move to a bigger station a lot of these things will be done for you by a press officer but its good practice to get in to the habit early on and not rely on anyone else.

You can also move on to making or helping create video adverts for upcoming casts, but that’s something we usually leave to the techie people unless you are feeling brave!

The golden rule is : You can never advertise enough and all advertising is good!