We all know that social media is where it’s at these days. It’s the perfect place to get news, share with friends, or just kill some time with epic reels. And let’s not forget about the brands that are all over social media like white on rice. But game companies have a special advantage – their products are naturally social!
We game with friends and family online or in person. That’s why marketing games on social media is perfect for game studios to connect with their audiences and create a community around the brand. It’s like a match made in social media heaven!
So here’s some advice if you’re marketing games on social media.
Who are your followers? What kind of content do they enjoy seeing? Take a look at what your competitors are doing and try to come up with something unique that sets you apart.
Remember, social media is all about being social! Engage with your followers, reply to their comments, and show them that you value their opinion.
Speaking of opinions, our Tictales Community Manager, Manisha, shares a few insights on how to leverage groups on social media for marketing games and community building:
“Facebook players are interested in game announcements, feedback, and questionnaires, while Instagram users want to see more creative and artistic content. This also includes soliciting feedback about what users would like to see next in the game, and creating a sense of community where members feel heard and valued.”
It doesn’t end with Facebook groups. With PC and Console games, Discord and Twitch work wonders.
“Discord really is the heart of our gaming communities,” says Maddie, from the Kwalee Gaming team. “All of our die-hard fans are there, so it’s the place where we get the highest quality feedback on our games, the largest pool of informed alpha testers, and a fantastic repository of user-generated content that we can use on social media to promote our games.”
Another advantage of having engaged communities is content generation. Think about it: do your players enjoy your game so much that they’re keen to share gameplay content? Then that makes for a great UGC content pillar in your content strategy for marketing games. For example, Wildmender uses stunning screenshots and gameplay videos from Discord on Twitter and Instagram regularly.
Which brings us to our next hack – content syndication.
Simply put, make the most of the content you make.
Do you have an interesting video about game dev tips, interviews with your studio team and such on YouTube? Edit and trim these videos for your Instagram Reels and TikTok videos. Short-form videos in these platforms work the best.
You can do the same for a blog post. Promote the blog post on social media to drive traffic to your website. And then really deep-dive into the content and repurpose it into byte-sized snippets later on.
Inspiration for marketing games can come from anywhere, right?
Well, don’t be shy about peeking at what your competitors are doing! For example, Supersonic shares memes that are funny and relevant in the mobile games space.
Another brand that’s got quirky written all over it is Devolver Digital.
Use a wide range of content themes and formats to keep your audiences engaged, as you’ll notice in the examples above.
Almost anything will work on social media, however wacky. We went all out on April Fool’s Day in 2023 and announced that driving tests were being replaced by a mobile game, and that we developed tech which allows game devs to create games with just a single thought!
The result? We had over 130,000 estimated views, topped with 11 backlinks from this coverage. We almost fooled Gamer Hub with the driving test news too!
In your attempt to get creative, don’t neglect easily available content. For example, gameplay videos. While they might not seem like an award-winning idea, gameplay videos are core to the games you make. (After all, you’re marketing games people want to play!)
We’ve managed to share gameplay videos of some of our games on TikTok which make for quick and easy-to-digest content while giving the audience a flavour of what Kwalee does as well. We’ve gained over 850 views each!
Save time, use tools
Once you’ve got all these great ideas, these are several ways to implement them and quality check. Some tools that we find quite handy are:
Finally, after you have all your ideas down and have figured out the best platforms for your games, you can also from time to time hop on trends for extra mileage. Like this Kwalee Gaming TikTok video which got 300,000 views because it used a trending track!
Complement great content with consistency and you’ve got a winning social media strategy right there. Better still, you can leave all that social media work to an award-winning mobile game publisher like us. Since 2011, we’ve experimented to discover what it takes to turn PC, consoles and mobile games into smash successes.
Submit your mobile games through our official Publishing Portal, or send a playable vertical slice to our PC & Console scouts. All you need are a few minutes and a couple of gameplay videos or a simple playable prototype of your mobile game. Follow us on social media (TikTok | Twitter | YouTube | Instagram | LinkedIn) to get the latest deets on our gamedev efforts.
Trailers open up the world of your game to players. They’re an essential part of the lifecycle of a release and one of the main ways people discover a game and decide whether to invest their time and money into it. Knowledge of how to make a game trailer is a make-or-break essential skill to have on your side if you’re developing or publishing a video game.
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