Brandon the Game Dev

You probably found me through Twitter. I have data that says so. My first game, War Co.,  succeeded because of social media. As I write this, I have over 10,000 followers between the War Co. and blog Twitter accounts and over 25,000 followers on Instagram.

I didn’t go to any cons. I didn’t go to any stores. I didn’t have a Board Game Geek account until last year. In fact, I knew very little about modern board games until last year. The passion I felt in my heart led me to design War Co., which introduced me to this thriving, wonderful board game community that I would have otherwise never known about.

Social media didn’t just pay for my dreams. It also taught me everything I needed to know. It put me in touch with incredible people, brought articles to my attention, and told me which games were good to buy.

I know how powerful social media is and I know how to use it. In fact, I’m even a published researcher on the subject of viral marketing. That’s why I’m writing this guide. I’m going to tell you how to use social media effectively for your board game project.

Setting up Social Media: Before You Speak Your First Word

If you sign up for Twitter or Instagram or some other social media site to promote your game, you probably want to get a ton of followers. Getting a ton of followers is hard, time-consuming work – there’s no way around this. However, you can make your life much easier if you start out looking professional. Professionalism isn’t about the size of your team or your number of followers. It’s about clarity of purpose, attention to detail, and consistency.

Step 1: Choose your message

You probably have a rough idea of what you want to say. You need to have a good idea of who you are, what you are trying to say, and what you want people to do. It’s amazing how many people fail at this. Open up Twitter and look at random people’s bios. They rarely tell you much about the person.

People know my name is Brandon Rollins. I don’t hide behind the brand name of War Co. People know I’m a game developer, people know I like sci-fi, and people know I want them to buy my game (wink, wink). Clarity is vital.

Step 2: Choose your audience

I couldn’t sell War Co. in a nursing home. No one would care. A kindergarten class won’t listen to your advice on 401(k) investing allocations. A big-city liberal Democrat would have a hard time engaging in political discourse in the Appalachian region of Tennessee.

Point is: your message needs to resonate with your audience. Choose your audience wisely. If you can’t choose your audience, change your message until it works for them.

Step 3: Choose your platforms and learn them

There’s dozens of social media sites out there, but here’s the big ones: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Pintrest. The list goes on and on. Figure out where your audience hangs out. For board game devs, you’ll find people on all of these, but some communities are better than others. Do your homework. This is always changing.

Don’t just pick a platform and get started, though! Observe how people communicate. Read, watch, and listen. Take note of what the most influential people do. Learn what all the settings and buttons and switches do. Figure out the mindset of your audience on each particular platform and customize your message. You don’t want to come across as tone-deaf – that’s where a lot of big companies fail. People don’t often want to be sold to.

Once you know how a platform works, get set up. Use great photos and make sure your page looks professional.

Is this thing on? – What to Say After Setting Up

Step 4: Build a backlog

The first thing you should do once you are set up on social media is post regularly for a couple of weeks. Don’t worry about anything else. Just use the platform for a couple of weeks to build up a backlog of material that people will see when they find you.

Step 5: Start talking to others

Once you’ve got a couple of weeks behind you, it’s time to start engaging people directly. This comes in a lot of different forms. You can follow people who you think would be interested in you. You can comment on other people’s material. You can make prudent use of hashtags on applicable platforms. The goal here is to become visible.

….Just don’t be a weirdo who goes on other people’s pages and says “check out my page!” That’s dumb. A lot of well-meaning people totally blow it by doing that.

This takes time. This is the elbow grease you need to succeed. Keep at it. Your first 1,000 followers are the hardest to get. Then you start gaining people organically (read: without gritty, hands-on work). I find that once you reach 10,000 people on most platforms, people starting coming to you. Even when you reach 10,000, you will still need to engage people directly. Plus you will have added difficulties on top of that. I’ll get to that in the next section.

Have real conversations with people every single day when you’re starting out.

Iterate. Change your approach. Find the right way to talk to people. You won’t get it right in the first month or even the first year. I’m still learning, changing, and growing every day and I’ve got nearly 40,000 people between all my channels. (I’ll give you a little hint, though. People love images.)

Going Viral – Advanced Social Media Techniques

After a couple of months, you’ll probably feel like you’ve got your feet under you. Now it’s time to move on to more advanced tactics.

Step 6: Schedule, Automate, and Outsource

You’ve probably noticed by now that staying on top of social media is kind of a pain in the ass. You don’t have to be online all the time. You can actually come up with posts in batches and schedule them throughout the week with software like Hootsuite and Iconosquare. Even if you have to pay for some of this software, it’s often worth the money.

Some people even go so far as to automate following, unfollowing, liking, and even commenting. Be careful with stuff like that. Read the Terms of Service of your platforms before you do anything like that. I personally do not automate my accounts with bots. Many people do. It’s your call. Be considerate and ethical.

Alternatively, all the things you might choose to automate, you can simply outsource to employees or freelancers through sites like Fiverr. I don’t do this either, but I’ve thought about it. Point is, if you feel yourself buried under grit, that’s a sign that you need to give the dull stuff to someone else and focus on what you do best.

Step 7: Gather Data

Most platforms have robust tools that gather data on your posts and people’s reactions to them. Facebook has Insights and Twitter has Analytics. Instagram recently started gathering data as well (but it’s frankly annoying to parse on a mobile device, which is how you have to access the network for the most part). Oftentimes, you can export and save this data to look at in Excel, where you can do heavy analysis.

Step 8: Tweak Your Message

With or without spreadsheets, though, you can benefit a ton by looking at what people like. Twitter Analytics let me know which of my “War Machines Company” jokes were getting liked and retweeted and which ones were falling flat. Iconosquare’s data for Instagram let me know what people like to see on Instagram (mostly art with a clear object in focus with a lot of intricate detail).

With the data I gathered, I started changing up my style. My social media channels had been stagnant for a little while, but reacting to data about my social media dramatically improved engagement – likes, retweets, etc.

Post more of what people want to see, but stay true to your overall message. Continue to iterate your approach, just like you would a game when you’re developing it.

This is a high-level walk-through. Every site you use is different and specific advice is very time-sensitive. I haven’t even covered paid advertising!

If you have specific questions or comments about your social media plans, I’d love to respond in the comments.

I’ve written before about some of the rude awakenings I experienced when starting a board game business. So many of our sorrows are born of the disparities between our expectations and reality. It’s my hope that by spelling out the specific things that happened to me, I can prevent you from being surprised and disappointed by some of the harsh realities of game development. Through that, I hope you’ll be free to experience the incredible satisfaction of creativity and the sheer fun of getting into the gaming industry.

And now, without further adieu…

1. Taxes are everywhere.

Other than death, taxes are the one certainty in life…but the extent of taxes I encountered during the creation of War Co., the Kickstarter campaign, manufacturing, and fulfillment were nothing less than stunning. I can’t imagine it being any different outside of the United States. For everyone who buys cards from inside my own state of Tennessee, I owe sales tax. For anything I import into the state of Tennessee, I owe use tax. For any profit I earn, I have to pay business tax. If I pocket any of that profit, I have to pay income tax on that.

Oh, and that’s just domestic taxes. Whenever cards are shipped from the United States to other countries, they’re subject to value-added tax, customs tax, and administrative fees on top of customs taxes. I cover all this on my end so customers don’t have to deal with the hassle.

You get used to it after a while, and it’s not enough to choke the life out of a small business like many hand-wringing individuals may fear. In fact, some level of taxes is a fair trade for the services which facilitate owning a business. The trouble is that they’re hard to calculate and the actual amount you end up paying is a surprise early on until you build robust ways of predicting it.

I’ve learned how to cope with taxes through experience and careful bookkeeping. Staying organized has helped me stay on top of this.

2. Shipping is a complex beast.

I’ve dedicated not one, but two articles to the complexities of shipping. I think I said it best in a prior article when I said:

For a moment, consider all the variables that go into fulfilling a Kickstarter campaign. Your manufacturer has to receive parts from their suppliers. They have to send the product to you or your distributors in bulk. Then they have to separate the rewards and send them to individuals. The whole time, your rewards or their component parts are zipping back and forth in boats, cars, planes, and trains. They cross country lines multiple times, go across oceans, fly thousands of miles, and are handled by multiple different companies. Your rewards are subject to all kinds of laws and taxes that you can’t possibly understand all at once. No one can.

That realization sink in yet? Good. Don’t let it dishearten you, because it’s not actually that hard to deal with. You just need to respect the complexity and variability of what you’re doing. That’s the beginning of understanding.

The two articles linked above show you how I’ve overcome the challenges of fulfillment. It’s worked pretty well for me, and I’m actually a couple hundred dollars under-budget!

3. Most of my time is not spent designing.

I love game development. I also love running a business. Yet shockingly, the amount of time I spent developing War Co. was far less than the amount of time I’ve spent running social media campaigns, preparing for Kickstarter, getting the game manufacture-ready, fulfilling the game, and performing general day-to-day business functions.

For every hour I spent on War Co., maybe fifteen minutes went to developing and play-testing the game. The idea of the creative genius sitting alone in his or her room, creating perfection is a myth. Creating something great comes through a good idea filtered through rework and the opinions of hundreds of other people. That “something great” is then propped up on an infrastructure of business processes like accounting, promotion, fulfillment, and sales.

Time spent on design is crucial, but you can’t ignore the entrepreneur and manager aspects.

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This is an industry of immense possibility and potential. It’s a blast, and I encourage you to get involved and make your dreams come true, too. But there’s no sense in being delusional about what it’s going to take. There’s a lot of hard work and relearning along the way.

Two weeks ago, I wrote an article on how to prepare for the cost of board game fulfillment. In that article, I also mentioned three other ugly truths about fulfillment that I’ll be talking about today.

1. Even domestic fulfillment – packages originating in the United States and going to somewhere else in the United States – can be tricky.
2. Your international customers might be charged customs or VAT, unless you ship from within their country or region. That means you have to fulfill your games through a third-party distributor OR YOUR CUSTOMERS MIGHT GET CHARGED EXTRA.
3. Don’t try to fulfill your game on your own if you have more than 200 people to send to at once. Same principle applies if ongoing shipping takes more than an hour or two.

With that in mind, I’ve written how-to guides to help you address these three issues. As with the original article, this advice is targeted at game developers in the United States. However, it might still be helpful even if you’re outside of my country.

How To Ship Low-Volume Domestic Packages Yourself

If you’ve got fewer than about 200 packages to send in the USA, you’re probably better off fulfilling rewards on your own. Services are expensive at low volumes, but critical at higher volumes – we’re talking hundreds of packages OR regularly sending more than 10 packages on a daily basis.

Step 1: Order Flat Rate Mailers from USPS

Our benevolent government has seen fit to provide us with free supplies for shipping mail through the USPS – as long as you’re using priority mail. You still have to pay for postage, which costs quite a bit, but is usually cheaper than anything else (like UPS or DHL). You can order free boxes and mailers on the USPS website in quantities of up to 100 at a time.

Step 2: Buy Packing Supplies from ULINE

If you’re buying boxes, mailers, or bags, there is no better place to look than shipping supply mecca, ULINE. I personally chose to put padded mailers inside of the USPS priority mail padded mailers when I was shipping War Co., so I bought a whole bunch of Kraft yellow mailers from the ULINE store.

Also worth mentioning that if your package is too light to consider priority mail (under 13 ounces) or too bulky to fit in the USPS boxes, ULINE has mailers and boxes of all sorts of sizes. You can use your own boxes and mailers and still print postage.

Step 3: Order Bubble Wrap and Shipping Labels on Amazon

Anything you can’t find on ULINE, you can almost always find on Amazon. A couple of things I found myself buying on Amazon for fulfillment were bubble wrap and handy-dandy adhesive Avery brand shipping labels. I cannot emphasize enough how nice those shipping labels are to have for the next step.

Step 4: Make Postage using Stamps.com

If you plan on shipping more than 100 packages at once OR 25 packages per month, I suggest you go to Stamps.com, make an account, and download their software. Full disclosure, it costs about $16/month to maintain an account, but you get a discount of $.70 on every priority package you print postage for, so it pays for itself pretty quickly.

All you have to do is enter the address you want to ship to, enter the weight and size of the package, print the stamp on your nice Avery paper, and stick it on the package. That’s it. Repeat until all your packages are labeled.

You probably don’t need shipping insurance. You will, however, want to buy a cheap postage scale. Your weight estimate needs to be very accurate, and rounded up a bit just in case.

Step 5: Print Scan Sheets and Take Them to the Post Office

Put all of your packages in a box or a bag. Print off the scan sheet that Stamps.com will give you. Take all the packages to the post office. The postal worker will scan your sheet. All you have to do is just hand the packages over the counter. One scan sheet updates the tracking information for all your packages.

How To Find Third-Party Distributors for International Fulfillment

Unless you have only a handful of international packages to send, I strongly suggest you find distributors to help you send packages. Distributors tend to have warehouses in different countries, letting them send packages for way, way, way cheaper than the USPS ever could. Plus, if you send international packages from the US, your international customers might be charged customs or VAT, unless you ship from within their country or region. That means you have to fulfill your games through a third-party distributor OR YOUR CUSTOMERS MIGHT GET CHARGED EXTRA.

Yes, I copied and pasted that statement from above. Yes, that’s the third time it’s been on my blog. That’s how important it is. Kickstarter backers and board game buyers in Canada, Europe, and Australia have come to expect customs-free shipping. You’ll disappoint them if you don’t provide this. It’s an uncomfortable fact, but one you have to work with.

Step 1: Do Your Homework

The best distributors for Kickstarter rewards and board game sales change over time. My specific recommendations below will soon be outdated. Start Googling for fulfillment companies, especially if they fulfill board games. Find names. Look up those names and see what people are saying about them. Rule out the bad eggs before you send your first email.

Step 2: Start an Email Conversation with Distributors

Before you start a serious business relationship with a distributor, email their company. A good chunk of them may not even respond. If that’s the case, you don’t want to do business with them. Pass them by.

If you get a person, start asking about prices. That includes customs, account fees, shipping fees, payment terms, etc. Make sure you have an accurate estimate for the weight and size of your game. Leave no stone unturned. Put everything in an Excel spreadsheet and do some price comparisons. It’s different for every project.

Step 3: Try Some of My Recommendations

Here are some companies I’ve had good experiences with:

• Games Quest – they do fulfillment worldwide. They’re based in the UK, so their best prices are for Europe.
• Snakes and Lattes – they do fulfillment for Canada. Their customer service is very friendly and their prices are very reasonable!
• Aetherworks – they do fulfillment for Australia and New Zealand. If you have a lot of packages going to that area, they’re worth talking to.

How To Find Third-Party Distributors for Domestic Fulfillment

If you’re shipping more than a couple hundred packages in the USA, it’s time to call in the big guns. You need someone shipping USA-bound packages for you. Even if you don’t have many packages to send, this is really good to know about in case your business gets bigger than you expect.

The steps to this are basically the same as above, but here’s a couple of different suggestions:

• Fulfillment by Amazon
• Fulfillrite

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This is a huge amount of information, and the longest post I’ve ever done. Shipping is very tricky, but if you are detail-oriented and hardworking, you can set up a network to fulfill your wildest dreams. When it’s done right, worldwide fulfillment is downright magical. Like a magician-in-training, though, it’s up to you to learn how the tricks are done.