The Loading Ready Run Kickstarter

[Mara Kalat]

I think the main remark is not that your promotion is not diverse enough, but rather that it's not more frequent.
So the Kickstarter suffix isn't after every video, the tweets on it aren't non-stop (I assume they aren't, I don't twitter myself).
Personally, I think we'll be fine without a higher frequency of reminders.

However, some more frequent updates (weekly?) on the actual kickstarter page, maybe one that explains the added tiers etc. seems like a great idea.

Mara.

[JackSlack]

I'd be reaching out to any guys you know who can also reach an audience. I know it seems shameless, but if you can get a few Internet famous geek types to give you some quick shoutouts, it will help.

[Tyrodis]

What other self-promotion (to people who will care) can we do?

(I'm considering doing an AMA on Reddit, but that's all I can think of.)[/

I think the main remark is not that your promotion is not diverse enough, but rather that it's not more frequent.
Mara.

I'd be reaching out to any guys you know who can also reach an audience. I know it seems shameless, but if you can get a few Internet famous geek types to give you some quick shoutouts, it will help.

I kind of agree, however in the meantime I think Reddit is a damn fine start, there is already proof that the people on there like your stuff, I mean the latest episode of "Unskippable" is on the front page right now. Along with that the peoples of Reddit are pretty renowned for spreading the word on things (as I'm sure you already know) so some exposure on Reddit could really help get backers.....

[Master Gunner]

Updating the blog post with a link to the Kickstarter updates (and do the Kickstarter updates more frequently). Not everyone has the time or the will to watch an hour-long video to hear about the new stuff.

[Wolfwood723]

Just about 2,000 grand left. I hope we can at least reach D&D level after the regular goal hits. Of course if we could push this thing to Season 1 level I would be overjoyed. I've never actually seen the Girly Magazine Quizzes that I've heard so much about.

[Lord Chrusher]

You are not missing much.

[Wolfwood723]

Semi on topic does anyone have the correct spelling of Grahams alternate name,
Sir Dr. Godfrey Piddington Smie the 2nd?

[Lord Hosk]

First let me say, I love you guys, and think you are some of the most talented short form video producers on the web, I wouldn't support the Kickstarter if I didnt. To me, this kickstarter isnt about the last season of sketches it about the first season of LRR other content that will make you guys more money and lead to more "real" work as opposed to the Labor of love that the videos kind of are.

To explain myself I am going to go into a very detailed break down and this will seem like a "ok we get it" and I keep going, but I just want to be perfectly clear.

Click to Expand

I understand you dont want to "over saturate the market" which can be more detrimental but I think it has been firmly established that you dont have a single market you have like 8 surprisingly separate audiences with a few cross overs. There may be things you have set up for next week that we havent seen yet so this will just be a exhaustive break down of what we have seen.

While you made the video to put after your videos, we havent seen it yet after a video which means the people who show up to your panels and say "you do other shows?" are still probably missing it. I watched it on your youtube linked from the blog like a lot of people here did but that means a lot of people have missed it.

For Checkpoint, Paul did the bit at the end of the one on the 16th (episode 3-14) However there was no link below the video and as you noted, it was case sensitive and didnt show up that way in the video. Then there was no follow up in the 3-15 video on the 23rd.

For Unskippable, nothing has appeared that I saw.(contract with the escapist?)

Feed Dump, Nothing has appeared that I saw. (contract with the escapist?)

Loading Ready Run, there is a link below the video and the same video ran after the video on the 16th but nothing the week after.

MTGO Academy videos I didnt see anything but I just skipped real quick I haven't been able to sit down and watch it all the way through yet.

Thursday Night Draft: You talked about it when people brought it up, which was good and people can get the link from MTGbot.

Friday nights: nothing but im sure that has to do with the contract with wizards.

Twitter: From the 17th to the 22nd you didnt tweet about it from the main account.

Facebook: You post there but its the same deal from the 15th through the 23rd it was all quiet.

Kenji/Numot the Nummy seems to be a friend or at least internet acquaintance, he is streaming every day and you seem to be watching a lot if not every day, people in his chat know who you are but there were a number of people who didnt seem know about it and one person even commented "oh wow, I an going to have to spend my money on that now" or something along that line.

What I am saying is that there are a lot of opportunities to promote yourself that I feel you miss. This may just be my perception but this is an extension of the same problem that is exemplified by what you say at every convention "someone came up to us and said 'I just learned you made video X I had no idea" or when you talk about what you do at your panels and you can hear people saying "you do that too?"

I may have missed some things you have said or shown but I think I and a number of your other fans here on the forums are fairly meticulous in catching all the LRR we can so if we miss it just imagine the people who only see that one thing you do that are surprised to hear about the kickstarter.

I dont think the problem is the variety of sources that you target all though hitting a few other things couldnt hurt, I think its treading the same ground with a little more frequency that I think would help.

I am sure there are some areas where you produce content for other people and they dont allow you to promote yourself in that content but I think what people myself included are pointing at is that when you promote, people contribute, in that time where you werent talking about it, donations were flat. I dont think that I am overstepping myself to say speaking for the forum members, we all want this to succeed as much as you do and we are promoting it but there is only so much we can do.

[ecocd]

Here's my take on promotion. First off, I agree with Mara Kalat that I wouldn't want to be spammed about their Kickstarter 10 times a day for 30 straight days. That's more likely to get people to unfollow you than drive them to the Kickstarter, in my opinion.

The key to remember is that each promo message has a value and that value tends to decrease with repetition. Each day of the Kickstarter also has a different value. Few people give a crap about a Kickstarter in days 10 to 25. You don't use your promotional capital, so to speak, in the Kickstarter Desert. You save that capital for the most valuable times. In particular, the first days, new promo tiers and the final days.

If you get 100 "utility" for the first tweet, 98 for the second, 96 for the third, etc. Then you don't want to use tweets giving you 80 through 60 utility when they won't drive donations.

I do agree that at least some advert or splash screen about the Kickstarter should come at the end of the videos. "Like what you see here? Support our Kickstarter!" I guarantee you I wouldn't know Yahtzee wrote novels without the adverts at the end of his videos. The same idea of decreasing utility applies here, though. If people visit and there's 16 Days to Go in the Kickstarter, they'll window shop and think "there's still plenty of time left." They're also not likely to go back two weeks later having seen the avert for the 3rd time ("isn't that done yet?") when there's 2 Days to go and they would actually be the most likely to donate.

[Lord Hosk]

While I agree that there is a diminishing return on each time someone sees the ads my point is that with the gaps in their advertising schedual there seem to be people that over a week in now are not aware that there even is a kickstarter so to them today IS the first day.

I agree that Tweeting or facebooking 10 times a day would be way too much and hinder things but maybe make a chart at the office and be sure that every day there was always one or two messages going out from SOME source.

Not everyone follows all the sources and a lot of those sources like twitter or facebook are time sensitive, if they post to facebook at 10AM on a Monday and a fan checks their facebook before bed at the end of the day there is a good chance they miss that facebook post, the same with twitter.

[AlexanderDitto]

If I'm not mistaken, you all haven't mentioned the Kickstarter on Tap Tap Concede, have you? I can't remember if you mentioned it in the Theros episode, but I don't think you did, and those definitely attract a different segment of your audience than the normal podcasts....

You guys realize the Things on my Head youtube channel still has 17,000 subscribers, right? Maybe... maybe Paul could do a Things on my Head and put a Kickstarter on his head, pointing out that if people want more Things on my Head, they should consider Kickstarting?

Also, we need to put a banner on the Wiki. Though I doubt anybody's getting to the wiki and NOT visiting the mainpage. Hmm...

I just want you guys to have all the money, dangit. ALL THE MONEY. People need to give you all the money.

[Lord Hosk]

Something my wife pointed out while dropping me off as school.

Change your facebook banner and or avatar to something that will make people look at it and say "wait that is different what is that"

Also, we need to put a banner on the Wiki. Though I doubt anybody's getting to the wiki and NOT visiting the mainpage. Hmm...

I dont think we can assume anything at this point, I know for a fact there is one person who comes to the forums every day, clicks videos a couple times a week but only ever checks the blog when it is specifically mentioned as being a thing on the forums.

There are people who now after years of all four products running together dont seem to know that LRR produces feed dump, weekly sketches Unskippable and check point.

[Fantazme]

It should be in the descriptions of your twitter as well for sure. It's small, but it helps. I mean the offical LRR account is current blank, so info can definitely go there.

I think a lot is just in the frequency of it. I remember when Abby Howard was running hers, I couldn't help but hear about it almost daily. Even just retweeting people who are talking about how they've kicked it.

I didn't see the recent draft, but on the live drafts just set up a small banner similar to Kenji's for Brainstorm Brweery for sure.

To aim for the Magic Crowd, if you can't use the Friday Nights (and not sure of the legality/how happy WotC would be) but I'd jokingly have a video about a new card reveal. And the card is like "Kickstarter. Tap and put just 5 canadian dollar counters on it to help Loading Ready Run keep producing top quality content until end of year." or something along those lines. Short 30 second thing for people to share and tweet out.

[Narcuru]

I think it has been firmly established that you dont have a single market you have like 8 surprisingly separate audiences with a few cross overs.

There are people who now after years of all four products running together dont seem to know that LRR produces feed dump, weekly sketches Unskippable and check point.

I just want to reiterate what Lord Hosk said. I started watching you guys when CheckPoint first aired but I didn't know you did anything else until it was announced that Strip Search was being filmed/done by you guys. That's like three years of watching you guys every week and not knowing there was 7 years of weekly sketches to watch as well.

To that end maybe you guys should ask/email Mike and Jerry to mention your Kickstarter in their newspost. (assuming you haven't explicitly asked them yet. I know Robert tweeted it, but how many people follow Robert vs read Jerry's newspost? The worst that they could say is no, but that's what self promotion is all about.) You can't just rely on them remembering to tweet about it/ mention it in a newspost randomly be proactive about it.

Ask The Escapist to talk about you guys in a blog post or something. I've heard talk that they occasionally mention kickstarters so why not yours? Especially since by getting you guys more popular it could in theory help make Feed Dump and Unskippable more popular thereby increasing revenue for them. (win win!)

ETA: I'm sure there are other ideas (and other people have offered other great suggestions too like making an update on the Things on my Head channel, updating the profile pics on Facebook and Twitter, Tweeting about it a little more (once every third day maybe retweet someone talking about it or just throw out a reminder.). Also consider tweeting at different times during the day once around 9 am PST for the "morning crowd" and again around 9pm PST to hit the "night crowd."

[MisterDee]

Another person to ask for a quick plug would be Wil Wheaton. And that dude from Mythbusters whose name escapes me at the moment.

[Narcuru]

Another person to ask for a quick plug would be Wil Wheaton. And that dude from Mythbusters whose name escapes me at the moment.

Yeah even though Wil has only appeared in a couple of your older videos it certainly can't hurt to ask him to plug your kickstarter. He's always talking about people making things and this is kind of an extension of that. If he says no then whatever that happens, but if he does and tweets a link to your kickstarter to his 2.4 million followers? That would help you so much.

Ask all the StripSearch people to tweet about your kickstarter.

[Laurnil]

Well, here is the thing. I follow all the LRR people on Twitter. I've liked you on facebook. I'm not so good at watching all the videos when they come out (I usually have to spend a Saturday catching up every so often). But, I get notices about new videos on YouTube. And, I didn't know about it until I rejoined the forum and one of the other members told me about it. I haven't seen anything on facebook and I suspect that has to do with all the junk they're doing with feeds. I haven't seen it on Twitter because if it isn't in the first 20-30 posts I see, I don't see it. I get so many tweets and I follow only approximately 140 people, most of whom are members of your fan base. I delete the YouTube updates without reading them because I know they're just telling me there is a video I need to watch. So, in order to get people like me who love your work, but maybe aren't as consistent, you have to have constant updating. You should update facebook and Twitter every day at different times of the day each time. Send a personal email to everyone on the forums informing them about the Kickstarter (because when I get a message from the forums, I read that one). The problem is there are too many ways to get information about what is going on with you guys that you have to be really diligent about getting that information out. Like I said, I only found out because I got back onto the forums after a hiatus. I'd love to watch every video that comes out, but I work 60-80 hours a week. I just don't always have the time to go through everything on your Twitter feed or check your facebook or read all those annoying emails from YouTube telling me I need to do something.

[JackSlack]

Under a thousand to go!

I'm now 50% on if it'll fund. Could go either way.

[MatParker116]

So. so very close $134,047

[Elomin Sha]

FUNDED! $135,202

[korvys]

I with Jack, I don't think we can get *checks again* -$202 in 18 days...

[RedNightmare]

BOOM SHAKA LAKA!!

[Wolfwood723]

WOOO!!!! Can't wait for mini Harry to find his way here.

[Jamfalcon]

Woo!

[Yaxley]

Excellent.

Now.

ON TO THE CRAPSHOTS!