17. Juli 2022
Influencer Guide Part Two: 8 Tips to Make Influencers Fall in Love With Your Game
Influencers can be an enormous help for developers and put your game on the map. With the tight connection to their community, they can turn a game into a hit. That’s why we are taking a closer look at the influencer scene in gaming in this series. This time we’ve compiled a short guide on how to get influencers on-board for your game.
- First of all you need to find the right kind of content creator for your game. Browse around Twitch, YouTube, TikTok and other social media platforms. Look up games similar to yours and who created content around them. You can also try and see if there are some hashtags that might fit your game and who regularly posts under them.
- You want to find a community that will be interested in your game, so it makes more sense to find small creators that focus on the genre/style of your project. If someone with a very specific audience of 1000 plays your game, that might be worth more than a creator with 10.000 followers and a more general approach playing your game, as only a few dozen of those might show interest in your project.
- Also, if a streamer has never explored the genre you chose for your game, they might not easily get into it and bounce off your game, which could discourage their audience in a live stream.
- Think about what kind of content you could most benefit from at this point, depending on whether your game is already available or it’s still in development. Are you hoping for someone to do a Let’s Play, or would you like to be invited to show the game yourself?
- Prepare an elevator pitch for your game and why they might be interested in playing it. Why is it a good fit for them?
You've found a post of them playing and enjoying a similar game? Good! You can use that as a hook to easily explain your game. Also, you show that you appreciate their work and that you put some thought into looking into their content and not randomly approach hundreds of people.
In the case of streamers, they want to entertain their audience and have a good time with their community, so you could point out special features that can be more fun with a community, or show some funny situations from the game etc.
- How to get in touch: Many influencers have an official email address for business inquiries in their bio, so use that! If they are really established, they might even have a management, so you should get in touch with them.
If you can’t find any official way to get in touch with them, you can also reach out via DM, but be sure to include your email address then so you can move to a more official channel.
Be sure to make it easy for them to check out your game to see if it's a good fit for them and their audience: Include links to trailers, a website or demo. You can also set up a press folder in Google Drive or similar services.
- At this point, this is a business inquiry, even if you talk to them via DM: Be polite, follow up on your request after some time, but don’t get too pushy. For many smaller creators, talking about their favorite games on Social Media or streaming is still a hobby, and monitoring their messages is a small part of it.
- And last but not least: Don’t be surprised if they ask for money! Being an influencer is a viable profession these days. Especially when you reach out to a bigger name, there is a good chance they want to be paid for the exposure they offer your project. Of course, being an indie dev you might not be able to match their prices and it doesn’t hurt to state that. Plus, there will always be exceptions. They still might take such a liking to your game that they will pick it up anyway.
Read more about which gaming content creators from Hamburg you should know here in our short ovierview, the first part of this article series.
Want to learn more about marketing your indie game on a tight budget? Tobias, co-founder of Mooneye Studios, gave us great tips based on their experience with self-marketing the indie hit “Lost Ember”.
