Amino Tips #3: What to Do Before Advertising

•°Hello Leader Amino!°•

As a reminder, Amino Tips is a mini series I'm doing. Just general tips to help your amino flourish. Feel free to comment and request certain topics. I will do them as often as I have time. Please note that not everything stated here will be a fact, but will be based on what I've seen work and what I've seen fail. If something I say is a fact (example: pictures of self harm isn't allowed), I will be sure to provide as much proof as I can. Check #aminotips for more of these.

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Advertising. Something a lot of aminos need to get off the ground these days, yet it's something that so many s absolutely fail at doing. In this blog, I'll be covering the biggest mistake that so many people make: Advertising before they are truly ready. What does this mean? It means that some people are so desperate to start getting , that they get ahead of themselves and get off on the wrong foot. I'll be listing some things you should definitely do BEFORE you start advertising, and explaining why. Some of these may seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how few actually do these things. Let's get started.

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◑━━ Why You Need to Prepare ━━◐

Now, I'll warn you now. Everything I'm about to say may seem obvious to some people reading. I get it, but trust me when I say this post is necessary. I cannot stress enough how important it is to prepare yourself, your amino, and the ads you plan to post before you even consider advertising. I get it though, you want . Your amino can't be good without , right? Well let me tell you this: getting before you're ready becomes a lot harder.

Potential don't want to see an ad with a link and the words " us". If you do have a good ad, your potential don't want to click on the link to your amino, and see an incomplete amino. If they click that link and see a "Work in Progress" description, they might click away. If they decide to anyway, and they are welcomed with an amino feed with no posts, and no proper theme, do you really think they will stay? The chances are that they won't. They'll likely look for a similar amino of the same theme and it, assuming they are interested enough to do so. Either way, it's an issue. You lose the chance at potential when you aren't prepared for them.

Trust me when I say it is definitely worth waiting until you are ready to start advertising. It can truly make all the difference in your community having a good start. This especially applies to those who start aminos with a topic that isn't well known. Whether it be a semi popular book series, or a show that hasn't gotten a lot of attention. Being prepared is critical, especially when your potential are few and far between.

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◑ ━━ Finishing the Basics ━━ ◐

Before doing anything, you need to finish the basics of your amino. This is extremely important. But counts as the "basics"? Well, this isn't a set in stone thing, but I will include my recommendations. There are many things you should definitely finish before you start advertising. The ones I consider "basics" are simple. They are things such as finishing your community description; your profile, your community guidelines; your amino's aesthetic, aka theme; your amino's icon; and your amino's launch image.

Now this might sound like a lot. Trust me, it isn't. The hardest thing for most people is getting the description just right, but that can be made easier if you use a template. We have a templates section here for everyone to use. Doing these basic things help your amino look better, and more inviting. Without these things being complete, your amino will look sloppy. Sloppy aminos often have a harder time gaining new .

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◑ ━━━ Getting Posts Up ━━━ ◐

Note: You can also create a premade welcome message, to use later on!

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Empty aminos are a no no. A big no no. They are bland, boring, and drive people away. An empty amino is like walking into an empty store. There's no reason to be there! I cannot stress enough the importance of getting posts up. If you can't be bothered to post in your amino, why should any potential be? Now I get it, posting can be difficult. Lack of inspiration or ideas can plague everyone. Well, to help, I'll list some posts you can create that will help your amino.

The first post I often create is a welcome post. After that, I recommend "jump start" posts, such as templates. Now types of templates depend on your amino. Roleplay aminos should have OC templates, and any other related template you know your will need. These will allow your potential to immediately start roleplaying and being active. Franchise themed templates should have media templates, such as episode templates (especially for TV show aminos), movie templates, etc. These allow your to fill in the information about their favorite parts of the franchise. Of course not all aminos need such templates. Instead, you can simply provide bio templates, or post templates for your to use. Whatever works! While doing this, I recommend organizing your wiki. That way, it looks presentable to your potential , and allows them to quickly find what they want!

Any kind of post relating to your amino can be super helpful to have up. You could also create amino related posts, such as tutorials! Tutorial ideas are easy to come up with as well. I personally recommend tutorials about how to flag; how to bold, center, underline, etc; how to submit to the community wiki; and how to create your own version of a wiki! These can be extremely helpful, especially for s who are still learning how amino works. You could also create an amino database, so you have a place that contains links to all of the helpful and important posts your community has!

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◑ ━━ Having Something to Do ━━ ◐

As mentioned above, templates are a great way to give s something to work on, but not every member wants to put in the effort to make a great wiki. This is where you need to have something else to do. Something simple and easy. My first recommendation for this is an icebreaker challenge. They're simply challenges, which allow s to talk about themselves a bit. In the challenge post, tell them to answer the questions, include an image, and the hashtag, and there you go. An easy, and likely feature worthy post. will feel included, and you can use it as a way to get to know your . Another thing you can do is create a "Hangout Chat", if your rules allow it. This chat can allow s to get to know your staff, as well as other . I've always found it a great way to get s talking, and catch the interest of new . With this chat, you can either invite new to it, or broadcast it every now and then to let people know about it.

Of course not all aminos like icebreaker challenges, and some aminos have rules against such chats. If this is the case, you can also attempt a X day challenge. These types of challenges are simple. You pick a number of days, and give a task s can complete for each day. In roleplay aminos, the first day could be creating an OC. For franchise aminos, you could have s posting who their favorite character is and why in their first day. These challenges usually range from 7 to 30 days, so you have plenty of wiggle room on creating them. I personally recommend avoiding making them extremely long, as sometimes s will lose interest. Also avoid having extremely difficult tasks, as not all will want to do them.

Overall, any sort of premade challenge is great. Avoiding adding an end date, so s can enter, even months after it's posted. This allows new to have something to do when they your amino, even if you don't have other challenges or events up.

◑ ━━━ Preparing Your Ad ━━━ ◐

Alright, so your amino is ready to be shown off to the world. Time to start advertising, right? Nope! You need to prepare an ment first. The first impression that your potential will have is from your ment. This can make or break you. If your ad is poorly written, confusing, or just plain lazy, you could easily miss out on potential . This is why you should always make at least one ment in advance, so you can be sure that s will be interested. I'll (try to) keep this section short, as I could... Well have written a whole post on creating ads (specifically for promotion aminos). If you want to skip this section and read that post, you can find it right here!

To start, write about your amino. You'd be surprised how often people just say what their amino is and leave a link. If you can't bring yourself to write even a small paragraph about your amino, then why would anyone bother to ? Now, I don't mean to write a book or anything, but don't just put, "In my amino you can post about ponies. Please ." You need to write an ad that sounds exciting, and makes people interested. For roleplay themed aminos, talk about the history, or the theme of the roleplay. For franchise aminos, talk about what your franchise is, etc! I could go on and on, but it's really easy. Then, be sure to talk about what you can do. What makes your amino worth ing?

Now that you have detail, but sure to include a visual. Ads with no images, gifs, videos, etc. give the worst results, and rarely get noticed! I get that some are worried, because they aren't perfect editors. Let me tell you, you don't need to have perfect images/edits! Just find clear ones, and edit some text on them if you want. Often enough, you can find people who are willing to do edits for you. If you want, you can also include a background image. Not even an image, simply picking a color will do! Just ensure the color you pick is readable against your text, and looks good with your image.

Finally, you will want to list some rules. The most important ones, such as "no anime faceclaims" or "no roleplay", are ones you want to put. List 3-5 of them. After that, ensure you have a link. No, ensure you have a working link. Let me repeat: ENSURE YOU HAVE A WORKING LINK. There is not point in creating a phenomenal ad, only to have a link that doesn't work. While this may seem obvious, you'd be surprised how many people will write a book long ad, and then not bother to link their amino.

Once you have done everything, you're ready to ! Now, please that you shouldn't expect tons of new from one or two ads. It will take patience, so don't get discouraged!

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That was my third #aminotips. I know it was pretty long, but I wanted to be clear when talking about this. I hope it will help you with preparing your amino, and yourself, before you start advertising. Please comment below and let know what you think! Was this good? Should I continue? All up to you all! Thanks for reading.