At Team AMD Gamer, we created a 15-minute movie featuring highlights of the most popular gamers. We hosted the movie exclusively on our site. The most popular players all linked to the movie. 17,000 people joined our online community in 72 hours.
The next week we asked members for ideas about the next movie. Who should be in it? What should it feature? We called upon amateur editors to submit clips. We developed monthly awards for the top players (and the worst).
We asked popular community members to form a committee to decide who was good enough to be accepted into the next film. Members returned often to see who might be in the next movie. Clips that didn't make the cut became promotional material, we released them as teasers (members only).
Nearly the entire second movie was open-sourced. It was much less work. The second movie gained just under 41,000 downloads, and included two ads.
You can use a big tactic to get registrations. The real magic is to keep these newcomers coming back without betraying them. Develop the tactic into it's own community, it should bolt on to what you already have.
Do you still have this video up? I'd like to see it to get an idea of how it looked. Did you interview these people in real life?
Posted by: Louise Brown | Wednesday, 12 November 2008 at 21:48