Welcome to Gaia! ::

(Not that RG has a need for more ad/recruitment threads, but...)

Having a recruitment thread where members of this guild can all hang out is one approach that's worked for others guilds I've been in. ^^ It lets people see what kind of a community we are, what we talk about, and get to know some of us before they take the step of sending a join request over here.

Now that we're at the top of our category, (as awful as this sounds) we don't have to put in as much effort to recruit these days, but in the past we've done the norm - bumping our ad thread, making sure we have an effective front page (though it could use a revamp sometime soon, methinks). We also have constant competitions, some which relate directly to the guild's theme, and others which don't. We generally try and throw parties with prizes quite often - we have two types - post count parties, and Sabbat parties (we're a wiccan guild, so we try and celebrate each Sabbat as a guild by dedicating one of the subforums to the party each sabbat).

If anyone wants to hear what we do for our parties, let me know. smile

Aside from that, we have a junk shop, which serves not only to advertise, but also to raise guild funds. We also sponsor/affiliate with a couple of charities, and in the past have affiliated with other guilds, though nowadays it's difficult to find a guild on a similar member/post count level that has a compatible theme and community. We have a newspaper we write each month, which we post in one of the subforums (used to send it direct through friends@gaia, but you know what happened there...), and we market ourselves as being a religious support community, with emphasis on the community part. Our mule's profile is one dedicated advertisement, and we use the comments feature on her account as a testimonials type thing.

I said earlier that we run constant contests and games - some of which are free, and some of which are pay to play, to help with funds. We also allow the members to set up their own games. We have our own marketplace, where members can host a mini-shop (related or unrelated to the guild theme) for 250g/month. We also have a bucketload of signature images members can use, too.

That's all I can think of at the moment. o_O

EDIT: oh, and we also search for gaians who have 'wicca' or 'paganism' listed as one of their interests, and send them invites.

I'm still in the process of building one guild, all I had to do was tell people what I was planning and many asked to be put on the list to be invited when the guild is opened for business. It's not the kind of guild where I care about number other than to have enough to make the idea work. When I open there will be a large enough number for a good start. I think they like the idea of an attached art shop where they can sell art without making most of the effort themselves, it'll be a group effort. All I ask is that they contribute time or art/help to be used to help other artists and writers. Any profits from their art is all theirs.

well when i first got my clan started up i went around to all my freinds and basicly sent out invites, i posted in the guilds that i belonged to about the clan.

then i had set up an ad thread and people slowly trickled in there.

what really made my memberlist jump however was when one of our members had their thread spotlighted and we jumped 10 members (we could have gotten more but the interviews were takeing too long and i was also overwhelmed at the amount of requests.)

my current plan is to have a member contest and have the public vote on the winner. i'll most likely have a raffle go on in that thread as well to keep the thread up.

I have an interest based guild. And am Finding it hard to get a group of people of that interest.


And Ideas to help?

In my guild, we don't necessarily care about the number of members as much as having our members post. So, since it is still a small guild we are very strict because of problems from a previous guild getting hacked and such, we have constructed a member watch list. this posts the status of each member, its hard to keep up but its nice. we ask that people inform us if they are going on vacation or will be busy because of school, work, or other things. that way we know who is posting and who is being inactive. when we have inactive members we send them a notice, reminding them to post.

its a little bit of work, but it would be a good idea to use for crew members in a larger guild.