Last week, I asked for a few volunteers to assist me in a little side project I was setting up. Now that it is, allow me to go into a little bit more depth concerning its nature.
Now, we have a plug board. We use it to plug our ads onto the plug boards of other RP fora. That makes sense. Except the part where the traffic is not targeted, as we’re just hitting RP Fora in general, with the very few related, and willing, fora, becoming our affiliates. That is the equivalent of taking a handgun with one bullet, going into a field full of targets in the middle of the night, blindfolding yourself, and then shooting at random with the expectation that you will hit a bullseye.
Of course if you’re sceptical of my argument, you can try doing just that sometime. Tell me what happens 
Granted, we did get something out of that method, but this is worth a shot, if any, as it heightens our chances.
In any event, that leads us to what I call the Special Executive for Advertisement Research and Systematisation.
Or, in a silly little acronym…
Yyyyyeah… so I made a silly little logo because I thought it would be funny. Not exactly S.T.A.R.S., but hey. We’re not out to fight zombies here.
But that aside, SEARS is based on something that I’m primarily focusing on right now at work. Having done some research concerning social media (uh oh, there’s that word), and its potential business applications, I have come to the conclusion that it is possible to use that to extend our reach to a larger audience.
Note that I said ‘larger’, not ‘wider’. “Wider” means more mainstream and diverse, what we’ve been doing so far, by firing our guns at anything we can fire at, without consideration for whether or not they’re actually interested in what we have to offer. ‘Larger’ simply means more volume. But the type of audience we’re now aiming at will be ‘deeper’, that is to say, of similar interests as ourselves.
We call this, our deeper audience, the “target market”, a familiar term for some of you.
This is taking it a step away from just plugging in at any RP board that we spot – but we won’t cut down on that either. This is utilising the network infrastructure of a massively interconnected system to reach a target audience and improve our chances of acquiring, well, more members.
Now there’s nothing to be alarmed about. We don’t expect it to flood us with new members any time soon. After all, just because you play Fate/Stay Night doesn’t mean you’d be interested in roleplaying in the setting. You might like it, but you might not be a roleplayer in general. However, we expect a healthy stream of new players to join us, with enough time.
The SEARS team is already hard at work implementing this little plan, just like the venerated advertising team of old, which brought us our first batch of new members.
Now since this is social media we’re talking about here, it will involve the sharing content. While we certainly share related content such as the latest on the general Fate and Type-Moon scenes, creating a brand image and brand presence on the Socialnet requires that we share some of our own user-generated content. That is to say, stuff that we put up on the boards, like profiles, RP posts, articles, and for a few of us here, even art!
Note, of course, that we will only be sharing content, and won’t even go anywhere near your personal information, so rest assured, your privacy remains safe. However, if you are still uncomfortable with the idea that your profile, or your RP post, or your occasional drawing, might be shared to other Fate-liking people (strangers nevertheless) as a paragon of our community’s excellence, then you may feel free to tell us so, and we shall take that into consideration.
You are our valued members, after all.
So, that’s about it. Any questions may be directed to me.
~Ilya
