Guide to Guild Success: Part 3

With this guide, I plan on writing different articles that will explain most of the hardest parts about owning a guild, upkeep, and on top of that: making it succeed. I hope to provide helpful tips and advices that will come in handy for those who are both old and new to the Guild Community. By no means is this the law, but after years of experience I want to share my knowledge about the place that I got attached to the best. Neopets without guilds would pretty much lack the sense of community and even more, sense of family.

Part 3: Guild Content

Content within a guild is of the utmost importance. Content is often the first thing that potential members will look at, so you need to impress them in order for them to even be interested in your guild. Content is so important because it is the persuasive mechanism used to draw people to your guild.

When writing content, there are many things to keep in mind. For example, don’t bore your reader with your explanation of the content! If you bore the reader, he or she will most likely not be interested in your guild any longer. In order to write content, you should make your content user-friendly and eye-catching! Don’t be boring, and don’t be afraid to throw a couple jokes into your content. Remember, the main goal is to get people to be interested in joining your guild.

In regards to making your content user-friendly, you probably don’t want to use a lot of lengthy words, and you also don’t want to overuse words! Just keep your content straight to the point and in the language of your target audience. Make them feel important and that you want them to join your guild.

Eye-catching! Please don’t stuff all your content into one, long paragraph. It’s very daunting to look at, much less to read. Be sure to split your content up into paragraphs, perhaps starting a new one with each new topic you refer to. Additionally, sprinkle some bolded and italicized words into your content! Just be sure to not overuse these features, as they can also be very distracting to the reader. Don’t make the paragraph look plain and boring, make it look eye-popping and exciting! Just highlight the words you want potential members to remember while reading through the page.

Please organize your guild content. You don’t want to have something explaining the guild board and something explaining the ranks and requirements in the same area, as this can be both distracting, confusing, and overwhelming. When your guild content is isolated by topic, the reader gets the chance to focus and think about just that one topic (and perhaps about how awesome it is!) without being distracted and overwhelmed by other topics you may have.

Perhaps you have a lot of content? Not to worry, you can simply separate your content into different pages if you have to. Don’t cram every feature of the guild into one, two, or even just three pages! Again (I must seem redundant by now), do not overwhelm your reader! You can separate your guild content into separate pages such as your website, portal, graphics, activities, etc. Keep things separated by topic so that the reader knows to focus on that one topic for that one page!

Time to move on to another topic that is also very crucial—proofreading. Say you’re reading through a guild page and you see an error. Another. Another. Another! Do you really want to join this low quality and unprofessional guild? Proofreading your content is very, very important. If you have a spelling error, grammar error, or typo on your guild page that you don’t notice, it could very easily be confused for a different word or phrase, or make your guild appear to not emphasize literacy on its guild boards. Ask friends and other members to read through all the content because maybe the typos you could’ve made can be seen by more than just one person.

Hand in hand with proofreading comes legibility. When typing up your guild content, you want to make sure that people can actually read words on your guild page! Be sure to use plain and decipherable font faces. Even though fancy font faces look, well, fancy, they may not be the optimal ones to use on a guild page. Be sure to use font faces such as Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, Times, or Verdana in order to ensure that your reader can actually read and understand the page.

Additionally, avoid using chatspeak in your guild content. When the reader is browsing a guild page, he or she does not want to see chatspeak in something that is supposed to look professional and win them over. How can you win a potential member over if you drive them away with chatspeak? Chatspeak makes your guild page look low quality, unqualified, and unprofessional. However, you can occasionally use the (: smiley from time to time, so it doesn’t look like you are being serious when it’s not needed to be.

Have you ever heard of having too much of a good thing? Yes, this comes into play in guild content. Sure, having too little content within a guild is bad, but having too much content within a guild can be detrimental as well. Too little content is bad because the reader will not be able to get an idea of what your guild offers, if anything. If you don’t offer much, how can you expect for members to stay, much less for people to be interested in your guild?

However, too much content is bad as well. Having too much content both distracts and overwhelms the reader as well. There would be too much stuff for the reader to do and to look at to even chat in the guild! Furthermore, the reader would feel too overwhelmed. Just think about it—Wow, there is too much content in this guild for me to even keep up with! I don’t want to join. Too much content can be harmful to your guild!

It’s a tad bit ironic that you were just told to not overwhelm your reader while you were probably just overwhelmed by everything you were just told! Allow me to summarize it all up for you (which may be a good idea to do on your guild pages—summarizing content and making it easier to digest and understand is good).

    - Impress your members! Don’t bore them, make the content eye-catching and user-friendly!

    - Organize your content! You do not want to overwhelm the reader.

    - Proofread your pages! Seek to eliminate any typos, grammatical or spelling errors, and chatspeak in order to make your guild content look professional.

    - Keep your content to an optimal amount! Remember, having too much is just as bad as having too little. You want to keep your members persuaded and occupied, but not too distracted.

    - Have fun! Don’t make your guild pages seem like a chore. If you have fun making them, your reader will have just as much fun reading them.

Now that you have all the tidbits and details that you need to construct your guild pages and write your content, you will be able to efficiently persuade members as well as keep them occupied in your guild. Have fun with your guild pages and content!