How To Be A Great Guild Leader

Here’s my advice to any and all aspiring guild leaders:

1. First, be certain you can make this kind of commitment. There are many guilds started out there with leaders who are inactive. No one will want to be a part of your guild if you never show up! If you can’t be active and run your guild, maybe creating a guild isn’t for you.

2. Next, find a theme. The broader the theme, the more members you are likely to get. If you are going to have a green-coloured objects guild, you must first resolve yourself to the fact that you will only be able to attract fans of green-coloured objects to your guild, basically. This significantly brings down your potential number of guild members.

3. There has been quite a bit of success in guilds that stick to a Neopets theme. For example: avatars, stocks, making NP, restocking, gamers, battledomers, etc. I would suggest picking an area of Neopets that you enjoy and are good at, and building your guild around that theme. I enjoy collecting avatars and since I have over 100, I am pretty good at that, too. So, I started an avatar guild so that I could help other avatar collectors.

4. Before you start recruiting members, I would suggest spending some time on your guild layout. In my experience, many users judge a guild by the way it looks and will determine whether to join on the quality of the layout. If you are a webbie (one who can easily run a website) and can build the layout yourself, spend a couple of days doing that first, before you start recruiting. If you aren’t a webbie and have no idea how to build a layout, my suggestion is to go the guild NeoBoards and ask around for someone who is good at graphics. Offer a council position to someone who can design your logo and layout and help keep it up-to-date. This will also save you some time when you are running your guild later on.

5. While designing the layout, take some time to come up with some ideas for your guild. You’ll need to have things to do to keep your members interested. You can no longer hold contests in guilds, but there are other things that your members can do to contribute. There can be a guild newspaper, you could compete for high scores in Neopets games, you can have a Battledome tournament, etc. Make sure whatever ideas you come up with, that they go with your theme. Not many guilds devoted to uber-cute baby pets have Battledome tournaments. You’ll need good ideas to motivate people to join your guild.

6. Once the layout is designed and you have a pretty good idea of how you want your guild to work, start recruiting members. Ask your neofriends if they’d like to join. Go to the guild NeoBoards and advertise there (no spamming though!). You can often find people on the guild NeoBoards looking for a new guild. Ask your current members to recruit as well. If you have a good, active, and interesting guild, your members will want to recruit their friends and neofriends. I do NOT suggest offering up council positions just to get people to join. People who will join your guild if they get a council position are worthless: they'll contribute nothing to the guild, and only want to feel important. In reality, they are just insecure about themselves not having such a cool guild like you. Shame on them.

7. Once you have a decent number of members… then you’ll need to stock your council. You really need to put thought into this one. Don’t just appoint anyone to council (and everyone is going to want a spot). If you have a good council, then you will have a great guild. Your council members should be active and helpful. They should be there to back you up and help you run the guild and come up with new ideas. Some guilds break the council up into jobs. For example: a webbie person, an idea person, a news/content person, a help person, and YOU. Feel free to modify what kinds of positions you’ll need depending on what type of guild you have. If you really need a webbie, have people interested in the position send you samples of their work and pick the one you like best. Don’t accept guild council applications that say, “I’ve always wanted to be on council. I promise to do a great job!” Although the member means well, if they didn’t take the time to put together a more detailed response, then they probably aren’t going to take the time to help you run the guild. More often than not, people just want to be on council and don’t want to actually do any work.

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If you follow these guidelines, you’ll have the beginnings of a very successful guild. To keep the guild members happy, you should also consider the following:

1. Remember to stay active and talk to everyone. Members really appreciate a leader who cares about them.

2. Don’t get into the middle of any arguments or disagreements in the guild and make it clear you will not tolerate fighting of any kind.

3. Be fair! Don’t give a council position to a brand new member who hasn’t proven themselves, even if they are your friend. Especially not if there are current members who have been working hard to try to earn the position.

4. Don’t tolerate scamming, hacking or harassing of any kind. Delete those members immediately.

5. Always ask for new ideas and suggestions from your members, make them feel involved.

6. Make sure there are things to do for your members. Keep them interested.

7. Keep the members informed on anything new happening in Neopia that affects your guild.

8. I always try to delete inactive members. If they’ve been around for longer than a month and have posted less than 10 times, they aren’t the best members to have.

9. Keep in mind that you can’t make everyone happy. Just do your best. Sometimes you will lose some really good members, but don’t take it too hard. Just focus on make the guild better for the members who stayed!

10. And, most importantly, have fun and make lots of new friends!