While not the most enjoyable exercise, gaining a good understanding of your game’s competition will give you a higher chance to achieve standout. And it’s better to do it before you invest hours and hours in development! But with so many games and sites out there, where should you start?

Platform stars

The best place to start is the platforms on which you intend to publish. Having a look at the most popular/successful games on the relevant platform(s) will give you a nice intro to the big players in that marketplace. If you can, play some of these. The closest ones will give you an idea of what to stay away from, and the unrelated ones may give you some unexpected inspiration.

Reading the games’ reviews can also give you a good introduction to that platform’s audience. Reviewers tend to be the more vocal customers and generally more likely to spend money on games. It’s worth getting to know what they think!

Platform genre stars

This is similar to platform stars, but more specific to your game mechanics. Having a good understanding of the most popular title in the same genre as your game (strategy, puzzle, racing etc.) will let you know what the audience might expect, enjoy and already have access to.

Sadly, there are no clear guides in terms of what should be taken as inspiration, and what should be viewed as ‘already covered territory.’ You’ll have to see as you go and use your intuition. If all else fails ask yourself, would you want to buy another game with that feature, or would you be done with it?

Platform search engines

This is an important way to test the potency of your game’s name. Giving your game a name which includes a popular word may make it more difficult to stand out from the crowd.

For example, you can probably assume that there will be loads of games with the word ‘Pirates’ in the title and so having it in your name risks getting lost in a high number of search results. Don’t just search for your game name either. Try out similar and related words.

Press and social

Game marketplaces are increasingly crowded and so gamers may find it best to discover new games from game news/reviews sites. These usually have a search function, and sometimes genre categories. Have a look through these, applying the same thinking as the above.

The same applies to social media and other search engines (Google, YouTube, Facebook etc.). What comes up when you search for your name? There may be games currently in development that wouldn’t have shown up in your other searches, but will be released before yours is published.

Conclusion

Having a clear idea of the competition can potentially save you from wasting a huge amount of time and effort, so it’s very important to do as much research early on.

Having said that, we wouldn’t recommend this as the very first thing you should do. Starting your game design from the perspective of the competition can have a negative effect on your creativity.

Our recommendation is to spend a day or so doing this exercise after you have put down a good chunk/most of your initial ideas into your design doc, but before you charge into development. That way you can start from a fresh perspective, then compare those ideas with what’s already/soon to be out there.

We’ve talked in the past about creating a good first impression – icons are possibly the most important asset you have aside from the game itself. Regardless of what type of game you’re creating, the icon is the thing that will represent your game on the user’s homepage or desktop. If your game is a mobile app, the icon is often the first thing people will see before they buy your game – a well-designed icon will help you cut through an incredibly crowded market place.

Whilst a poorly designed icon may not stop people from playing your game, a great icon can entice people to play more often – especially useful if your revenue model is dependent on repeat use.

We’ve put together a set of principles to help guide you in creating beautiful icons that make people want to click / tap. (We’ve focused more on principle for mobile game icons as generally the icon is the main asset users see before downloading, as opposed to PC games on services such as Steam.)

Note – we’re talking explicitly about icons here – the little square graphics that represent your game in app stores, on phone and on people’s desktops. We’re not talking about logo. Whilst there are cross overs, logo design is arguably a different discipline and something we’ll cover off at a later date.

Make it consistent

Icons should be as representative of your game as possible. We’ve already covered keeping it simple, so by representative I don’t mean trying to cram a screen grab into the little box. Rather the icon should take elements and styling cues from the game. If the game is cartoony and about fruit, put a cartoon piece of fruit as the icon. It’s an obvious sounding principle but there are an alarming number of games with icons that are seemingly unrelated. Users will have expectations of the game from its icon – if there’s a disconnect then they you’ve just annoyed them. Not the best way to start a potential relationship.

Stand out

Before starting to design your icon take a look at what similar games have done. It may give you some inspiration but more importantly it will show you what you’re up against and how to stand out. Think of app stores like supermarket shelves – some people go shopping knowing exactly what they want, but a significant number spend time browsing shelves. Anyone in marketing knows how important package design is. Next time you’re in a supermarket check-out the cleaning products aisle – they all tend to be white (because people associate it with clean) but here in the UK there are a few products that stand out, Cilit Bang being one, because they have a completely different colour.

They’re the first products you spot on the shelves. The package is still clearly for a cleaning product – long neck, spray nozzle – but yet it grabs customers’ attention due to its stand out. One quick tip to help stand out is to avoid using Apple’s gloss feature. It is specifically designed to give icons a consistent look and feel. The exact opposite of what we are going for.

Keep it simple

Icons are small. They are meant to be simple; the simplest possible way of representing your game graphically. First things first, avoid text. Text is a big no no in icon design. Icons should be graphical, should be instantly recognisable. Text will always be harder to read than looking at a picture, especially when we’re dealing with such a little box. Secondly, avoid clutter. Too many elements will make your icon ugly and confused, and will make people think twice about downloading.

Finishing touches

Whilst I’ve just hammered the point that the key for any good icon is simplicity this doesn’t mean it should be dull or lifeless. Pay
 attention to the little things, the small details. They can make the difference between a good icon and a great one. Shading, gradients, bevels – you may think the icon is too small to notice but you’d be wrong. Every little thing you can do to optimise your icon, the better.

Test it

There’s no rule that says you can’t show people your icon before submitting it. In fact I’d be in favour of a rule that says you have to. Show it to friends and family. And then show it to people slightly
more impartial. Get them to tell you what they think when they see your icon. Mock up what your icon looks like next to competitors’ – see if people spot yours first. Show them your actual game and see if the icon does a good job representing. Ask as many questions as you can before they tell you to bugger off.

So those were our top five tips; if there’s anything we’ve missed, share it in the comments. And if you’re working an your icon design at the moment don’t hesitate to share your progress with us if you’re looking for some feedback.

One of the most powerful types of promotion is word of mouth marketing, getting people to talk about your game. It’s quite obvious really, how many times have you gone to see a film, read a book or tried a restaurant based on the recommendation of a friend? Word of mouth marketing is all about encouraging and helping people recommend your game to their friends.

Whilst a lot of players will promote your game if prompted or asked to, if you offer an incentive for doing so you will see much higher rates of advocacy. If you have some form of in-game currency this can be as simple as throwing a few extra coins in their direction as reward for their action. If you don’t employ an in-game currency then you can still incentivize player sharing, but you may have to think harder about how you do it. It may be that you give away wallpapers or concept art, XP points, or unlock new parts of a map or items.

Below I’ve identified 5 mechanics for encouraging people to talk about your game.

Score sharing

People are competitive. It’s one of the reasons we like playing games, to beat other people. We are also competitive with ourselves. We love to beat our own high scores. If your game has a point scoring mechanic, be sure to let people share their scores online. Your best bet is to focus on sharing through facebook or Twitter since these are the most adopted social networks. Posting to Twitter is simple since the API allows you to contain the tweet in the URL. If you want post to both Twitter and Facebook from a mobile game then integrating a platform such as OpenFeint could be a simpler process. It also gives you immediate access to functionality such as high scores. That said, requiring a login to a third party application will be a barrier to your more casual players

Asking for a review

Especially for mobile platforms, having high ratings is a key thing users will check before downloading games, so having a large number of high ratings is a great way to help increase your downloads. Even though a lot of people will like a game, and rating it is a very simple process, very few people actually think to do it themselves, it’s not part of their thought process. So something as simple as a polite prompt is a great way to encourage them to do so -it’s not particularly obtrusive and a simple prompt is all most people need to go ahead and rate. Our advice is always to let the user play the game a while before asking them to rate the game, there’s nothing more frustrating than downloading a game and immediately being asked to rate it.

You could also consider encouraging people to rate your game with some form of reward for doing so, such as in-game currency if you have one. Remember to be careful how you ask, you don’t want to imply that you’re bribing people for positive reviews!

Challenging / playing with a friend

Humans are very social animals, we tend to seek out other people to talk too, and indeed, play games with. Social games have capitalised on this massively, with the likes of Farmville amassing huge numbers of players quickly by tapping into people’s social networks (read spamming their feeds). And as I mentioned earlier, people are also quite a competitive bunch. These two things combined means that mechanics that try to pit friends against each other, such as setting a high score and then challenging your friends to beat it, are a fantastic way to get people telling their friends about your game.

Liking / following

We’ve talked in the past about the importance of social media and specifically creating account of social networking sites. It’s a great way to give loyal fans additional content and drive engagement with your game brand. However, it’s also a great way to gain access to your fans’ friends. Every time one of your players talks about you on Twitter, or likes a wall post you write on Facebook there is a chance that their friends will see this. Provide fans with great additional content on social networks and they might even share it themselves. Do it well and you can create an army of advocates for your game, recruit new players through their actions.

Member get member

Lastly, and probably the oldest form of word of mouth marketing, is member get member. The principle is simple, you reward existing users for going out and recruiting new players. This can be through extra experience, in-game currency or bonus items – whatever reward your game can offer basically. World of Warcraft do this very well, offering incentives such as 2 free months for the friend, bonus experience when the user and friend play together, and unique bonus items for the user for recruiting a friend.

All in all, word of mouth can be a fantastic way to drive new players to your game. However, it’s important to remember that with an exception or two, these features and mechanics work best when they are properly integrated into your game, rather than tacked on as an afterthought, and definitely not to the detriment of the actual game. They should also add something to the user experience – this doesn’t have to be literally with a reward (though that obviously helps) but through tapping into human phycology (being social, being competitive).

We’ve included 5 main example here, but there are dozens of variations and combinations out there. Let us know in the comments which ones you’re using, and how they’re working. We’d also love to hear from you if you now are going to incorporate these in your game in the future.

The traditional approach of indie games makers is to consider your development period to be one of sole investment, hopefully to be rewarded upon the game’s release. This is the norm for the most part, but there are alternatives to help you along. In this series of posts, we explore other ways in which you can make an income from your game – some even being executable before your first game is released. The first of these we shall cover is affiliate marketing.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is essentially gaining a commission by recommending other people’s products and services. If a person clicks on one of your affiliate links and purchases that item, you gain a cut of that sale. A lot of blogs are funded using this scheme, and it can be a great way for people to learn about new products from sources they trust.

The main requirements of this to work is to have/grow a good sized audience, and to pick products in which they shall be interested. We have explained the importance of growing a strong community in other posts, as we have explained the importance of understanding your target audience. If you have not check these out already, we certainly recommend you do so now!

How do you do it?

This is all well and good, we hear you cry, but how do you actually set it up? Check out this video to learn how – in this case specifically for Amazon products:

Some examples

Let’s say we are making a game based in a pirate world. The game features stereotypical pirate characters and situations, allowing the player to enjoy the life of being a marauder of the seven seas. The game has a comical tone, with lots of funny characters and lines. With this alone we can make some educated guesses about the type of person that will want to play the game. More importantly for this topic, we can also assume what kinds of things they will be interested in.

• Pirates, because it’s a pirate game
• Naval warfare, because that’s what you do in the game
• Comedy, it matches the tone of voice
• Films/Books/Music, gamers tend to enjoy them
• Other games, particularly if your game isn’t out for a while

We already know that interesting content is key to keep your audience engaged with your brand – especially on your social outposts. We can assume that our target audience will like pirates, so why not run a feature about the pirate films/books/comics/games that inspired you to make your game? Chances are if you liked them, the audience will too.

Also don’t worry if members of your community have already enjoyed the product you are recommending – that’s still a win for different reasons. They probably wont buy your recommended product, but they might relate to you better and perhaps get involved in the conversation (“Man, I love this series! I think that X is the best one…”).

Summary

Like with so many things, affiliate marketing requires some trial and error to find the right balance. Always keep in mind that you don’t try to sell to your audience, you are just recommending them things you genuinely enjoy/value. When done right, it can be a great conversation piece for your community and can lead to some extra funds to help develop your game.

In the link below, you can download an Excel spreadsheet example of the exercise we detailed in the previous post. We have also included some examples for the first couple of touch points – hopefully they will help give you some great ideas.

Hope you find it useful!

Example Brand Touchpoints Doc

When you start a project ambitions are going to be high, but what can be more important for the consumer is that you be consistent. We all want to know what we can expect from a company when we interact with them and your customers aren’t any different.

To help maintain good consistency in your communications and brand activity it can be useful to construct some guidelines for yourself, Instead of taking these customer interactions as they come. There are a few benefits to this, but the main one is to ensure a clear, consistent brand personality. Remember that a brand isn’t a logo, but their opinion of you based on the sum of any direct or indirect experiences a customer will have of you.

Make an excel table and write down the following things:

Where they will come into contact with you?

These may include seeing one of your ads (press, trailer, paid ads etc.), talking to you on social media, receiving an email or dealing with you in a customer service situation. Write these down in column A, so that each situation has it’s own row (A1, A2, A3 etc.)

What would you want to experience?

This is column B. You are a consumer and most likely play games yourself. So what would you like to experience? Don’t worry about being reasonable at this point. Go wild if you want. So for instance what would be the perfect trailer experience? What would be the perfect customer service experience?

What would they want to experience?

This is column C. If you think you are similar to your consumers don’t worry about this, you can just use your answers in column B. If you are different, however, this could be important. For example, you may be a 22 year old guy, but making games for 35 year old moms to play with their young children. Again, this is wildest dreams of the perfect company.

What can you reasonably deliver them?

This is column D. This is where you have to wear your rational hat. You are going to be very busy with lots of stuff going on. Take the important parts of column B and C, but bring them down to earth. So say your perfect customer experience in column B was receiving ten million pounds. Obviously you can’t deliver this, but maybe you could give them a free game code.

How can you save time?

This is column E. Take what you have said in column D, but think of ways you can make the process easier. Maybe you can design a rough email template to give yourself a guide when you hit that situation – especially helpful for when you might be a bit stressed out!

How do you add your personality?

This is column F, and the little bit of secret sauce. Maybe there is something you can do slightly different than anyone else. For example, the maker of a fantasy game might word the response as if it was delivered by a goblin. What’s your thing?

This is how we do things

Once you have these boxes filled, draw your conclusions from it. It should give you a good and reasonable guide for yourself in how to act in different situations. Save the file somewhere and refer back to it every now and then.

Summary

Brand consistency is important and this approach can make sure that you attain it. Of course, you will learn new things as you will go along and it’s important to have a certain amount of flexibility. Feel free to add to it as you go, but try to not make any dramatic changes.

As always, we are more than happy to answer any comments or questions below!

Unique

Perhaps the most obvious quality that your name needs is to be unique. The more unique your name is, the easier you will be for people to find. A quick search for available domain names or available company names (UK example) is a good start, but you can also extend this to Twitter names and a good old Google search.

Impactful

A huge amount of promoting a game is about getting people’s attention. Does your name stand out from the crowd and give your target audience a quick, positive impression? Your name will most likely be placed next to others, so make sure you stand the best chance of getting noticed.

Memorable

It’s great if you have caught someones’ eye, but you need to also stay in their mind. Your name needs to be one that is easy for people to remember so make sure that it isn’t too complicated.

Relevant

There’s no point in giving your studio/game a name that quite simply doesn’t suit it. Think about your elevator pitch and what makes your game unique. Any name ideas that don’t support this in some way should be thrown out.

Interesting

Do you want to know more? This point is less important than the others, but it’s brilliant if you can get at least a bit of this factor into the mix. Some names automatically make you go, “huh?” and that can be very powerful. Building that level of intrigue so your target audience wants to learn more about your studio/game.

Easy to say, read and hear

I would expect that if people can’t read your name then you would automatically change it. On the other hand, a lot of people pick names that people find difficult to pronounce. For example, there used to be a TV show on in the UK called, ‘Blind Date’ which used to annoy me. The reason for this was due to the first word ending in the same letter as the second began with (‘D’). As a result, the words didn’t flow and so most people would end up saying, ‘Bline Date’. A good test for this is pretending to phone someone up and introducing yourself. “Hi, this is [your name] from [your studio name].” If you think you might need to repeat or even spell out the name out for the person on the other end of the line it may be worth having a rethink.

Expandable

Make sure that your name doesn’t limit you in the future. For example, calling your studio, ‘Mobile Touch Softworks’ will be a bit of a hinderance of you decide to start making games for XBLA. Make sure that your name gives you space to grow.

Conclusion

Creating names can be a lot of fun, but you can also find yourself get quickly attached to something. Before you get set on one, make sure you check each of these factors. Let us know what clever names you come up with, or get in touch if you’d like to bounce some ideas off us!

Everyone is in the same boat

There are lots of networking events held every month for the sole reason for people to make new contacts and industry friends. It may feel odd to introduce yourself to random people, but keep in mind that is why everyone is there in the first place.

Remember names

They say that no sound is as sweet to a person as their own name. People’s names are important and you should try hard to remember them. Repeatedly forgetting someone’s name suggests that you don’t think them worth the effort to commit it to memory. On the other hand, using a person’s name frequently (although dont go overboard) shows a certain level of care and attention to that person. It can also help make sure that you remember it!

Have a good handshake

This may seem like a small point, but a lot of people judge a great deal on a person’s handshake. You can find a lot of tips with more detail on this subject with a quick Google search, but simply maintain eye contact, have a firm grip and shake three times.

Get there early

It can be daunting walking into a filled room with lots of people already in conversation. While it may look like they all know each other well chances are they only just met, so don’t worry if you can’t get there early. If you can get there early, however, you can avoid having to break in to a group. It’s much easier to strike up a conversation at this early point, and chances are that this person may introduce you to others as the evening goes on or, even better, you can introduce them to someone else (achievement unlocked – master networker)!

Don’t hog people

One cardinal sin of networking events is to get clingy with people. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with talking to a single person for the whole night, but make sure you aren’t holding them against their will!

Stay in contact

Business cards are great for this. While meeting people in person will make more of an impact than digital equivalents, make sure to follow up your meeting with a friendly email. “It was great to meet you at [event], let me know if I can help with that [thing you talked about] etc.”

Summary

So there you have it. Some quick and easy tips to help you meet people. Of course, this is all secondary to being a genuinely nice person, so make sure you don’t act like a sleazy salesman trying to get as many business cards as humanly possible. Any questions at all, just give us a shout!

Editorial Calendar

Before you do anything else it is worth sitting down and planning through exactly what messaging you will be wanting to send out and when. Whether you plan this one week at a time or look at your 12 month schedule and plan updates and content, it is a good idea to know in advance what you want to upload and when. This way you’ll be in full control of your messaging and can ensure it matches up with any other marketing activity you have planned.

The 80/20 Rule

Across the web community managers talk about the 80/20 rule and this can and should be applied to content on Facebook. This is where around 80% of your content is specifically about you and your product with the other 20% around other world events, holidays etc. Sticking to this rule will ensure you don’t get lazy and rely solely on updates like “Morning, how are you all today?”.

Exclusivity

It is also a good idea to use some content exclusively on Facebook. This will add value to the page and encourage your community to keep visiting and engaging with the page and your content. Perhaps make Facebook the place to upload video diaries or high quality images of concept artwork?

Use The Community As A Guide

Once your page is up and running take note of what your fans respond best to and try to replicate this more often. This doesn’t mean churn out the same stuff but perhaps keep a theme running. If for example you get more Likes/Comments/Shares against images of where you work then think about how you can capatalise on that. Perhaps make Friday afternoons “Work Day” and upload amusing images of you and your team messing around.

You will also find that a few of your community members will upload their own images and videos. Often they aren’t much to shout about but at times you get some amazing stuff so think about how you can go about highlighting that. Not only will this encourgae more high quality stuff but it will make those whose images/videos you bring to the attention of others ambassadors of you and your game.

Be Funny, But Don’t Force It

Speaking from experience of managing communities we can tell you that the funnier the update/image/video the better the response. This doesn’t mean you have to keep trying to be funny however. Plan ahead, be natural and take on board the sense of humor that your fan base has.

Status Updates

There are five kinds of status updates that you can put on the page. Status (text), Photo, Link, Video and Question. I’ll talk further about the text update in a moment. Photo and Video updates are better left to directly uploading to the Photo tab into albums. If you have any important news and are looking to direct people to a specific link on another outpost then the Link update is the best option for that although you can just paste links into text updates.

The Question update is the latest addition and can be a great way of generating traffic to your page. Once a fan answers an update it is then shared to all their friends and so on. These can be used to gauge an understanding of opinion amongst your community or as a bit of fun. Just don’t forget, if you add poll options un-tick the “Allow anyone to add options” box. Otherwise you may find yourself in a sticky situation where various options are suddenly added by your fans that perhaps aren’t your original intention.

The text status update is the number one thing that Facebook is known for. It can be quite tricky to strike the right balance of updates per week, length of the updates and what exactly to right. The general rule of thumb is to stick to 3 – 4 text updates per week and fit richer content around that. This way you won’t be spamming your community and they will be more likely to want to see what it is you have said.

In terms of timing it differs from one community to the next. There will generally be two peak times per day on Facebook and those are predictably at lunch time and later in the evening. Weekends follow a similar pattern but do have longer periods of time with people on the platform.

For the length of text status updates try and stick to around 2-3 sentences. It is widely acknowledged that longer updates are seen as spam by your fans as it will take up large spaces in their newsfeeds. Also they will be more likely to read short, snappy updates and then in turn Like, Comment and Share them.

Behind The Scenes

This goes back to our previous posts to do with dev diaries. Keeping your community in the loop with the latest developments or your games alongside releasing content that shows off your personality. This is one of the best ways to help your community feeling part of what you are trying to achieve.

These can be simple images of you and your team working at your computer to video tours of where you are developing the game. Creating profiles of all those involved with the game to allow your community to get to know you all better will also prove effective.

Game Development

Your core community will love to see initial ideas, old concepts and final drafts of artwork, scripts, early build videos and soundtracks. Think about the rise of DVD extras, artwork books and the development documentaries that now spread across web people. People love seeing this stuff as it gives them insight into a world that they may not be party to. It also enables you to get early feedback on new ideas from those who will be playing your game.

Screen Shots and Sneak Previews

When your game is getting closer to release uploading screen shots and video previews are a no brainer. Make the content compelling and teasing by not giving away to much and allow your fans to speculate about what could be coming up.

Trailers

YouTube offers a lot more flexibility and more options and so it is probably best to keep the majority of your videos there and then paste the links into status updates. However it is a good idea to upload your major trailers to the Facebook page so that they are easily accessible as until Facebook unleashes a Timeline like interface for brand pages, fans very rarely search back through the page walls.

So there we go! A quick run through of what content to put up and when. In part 3 of our Facebook guide we’ll look at the different app options that are available and how they can enhance your fans Facebook experience.

What content do you think works best? Have you any other insights and ideas? Sound off in the comments below.

Part 1 today will focus on the basics and shows you what to expect when setting up your page (apologies to those of you who already have a page, further tips and tricks are coming in later posts for you):

Create The Page

To set up your page first head to the following address
https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

You’ll be greeted with the selection boxes to help you decide on the category of your company. Here is where you’ll need to make your first decision. Are you going to be creating a page for your independent games company or will you be making individual ones for your games? This is really down to personal preference due to how you plan on promoting you and your games. Also at this point in time it is important to just have one page to dedicate your time to. To help you with this think about where you are already with promotion. Have you already begun to gain buzz around your game or you as the developer? What are your potential fans going to be searching for?

For the purpose of my guide I will be setting up an example game company.

As you can see I have selected “Brand or Product” and from the drop down menu selected “Games/Toys” as this appears to be the most common selection by games developers. Feel free to select another category if you think something else matches better, this may however mean what you see will be slightly different to what is shown in this guide.

Profile Picture

Now it is time to select the profile picture. The max size that you can upload is 180×540 and it must not be any bigger than 4mb. There are many creative ways to use this profile picture and I would recommend looking at other pages to see how they are using it.

For this example I have taken a grab from a Nyan Cat wallpaper. http://kurutteru.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/nyan-wallpaper.jpg

Promotion – (Skip this part)

Next up is some initial promotion for your newly created page. Question to ask yourself here is do you want to promote your page just yet or would you prefer to wait until you have some more content on there? I would recommend waiting until you have fully set up the page to make it more compelling for visitors. So don’t worry about the invite friends section or import contacts. Unselect “Share this Page” and unselect “Like this Page”. Don’t worry with both of these unselected, you’ll still be the admin and can Like the page at a later date.

About

After clicking continue you will now be see the “Add some basic information…” dialogue. Here you can enter in your website and write a short 255 character About section.

BOOM

You now have a brand spanking new Facebook page. Now it’s time to add a little more information to get it looking all neat and awesome and Likeable… is likeable a word?

Basic Information

Click the “edit page” button and you will see the “Manage Permissions” section of the admin tools available at your disposal. At this time I won’t go into detail about theses and will save them for a later Facebook guide post. It’s pretty self explanatory and the default generally suits most people. Underneath “Manage Permissions” on the left hand side you will see “Basic Information” which is where you need to head to next.

This is all the information you should look at filling in before promoting the page. You can also edit this at a later date if needs be.
First up the category you will have already filled in. Below this is the often confusing “Official Page”, what this means is if this page is a fan page then you can type in and select the official page of the brand/company/product here. As you are setting this up for your own brand then you can skip over this.

Username/Custom Facebook URL

It is now time to select your pages Username. This gives you a custom URL e.g. http://www.facebook.com/SamsNewGameCompany Be very careful when entering this as it is officially not possible to change this once it has been attributed to your page. I’m only aware of a few occasions when Facebook has aided that change of a page username and those have been with companies who spend a fortune on Facebook ads. My advice here is also to try and keep the username short. I have just used this long version as an example and I doubt anyone is going to call their company that!

The rest of the basic information section is up to you to decide what to fill in, if a section isn’t applicable don’t worry about leaving it blank as it simply won’t show up in the info section of the page. Fill out everything that you need to, hit “Save Changes” and away you go.

So that’s it, part 1 of our Facebook guide is finished. In the next edition we will look at content.