Advertising target! Let's get 15 in over midterm!
by DH Skies
As we hit midterm, that means advertising season is upon us once again. Advertising has never been mandatory at Sonora, and we'd like to keep it that way, whilst making sure everyone takes part in getting the word out about the site. So, this year, we're trying collective group targets and other ideas, to break advertising down into smaller, manageable chunks.
The first goal is to get 15 adverts done, as a group, by the end of Midterm.
There are 3 ways to advertise that we have known to work in the past:
1) Personal recommendations. Have a friend who you think would fit in well? Recommend the site to them directly!
2) Social media posts There are probably a bunch of secret Potter nerds in your friendship group. Post to your social media accounts about the site.
3) Review stories on fanfiction.net Please remember to add actual comments about the story so your review doesn't just seem like spam. It helps to have an account so that authors can message you. You will have to put spaces between the parts of the address, as they are otherwise automatically filtered out by fanfiction.net (see sample text below).
'I'm from a creative writing RPG which involves all original characters and I feel you'd fit in well. Our applications are currently open or you can play on our 'sandbox' page to get a feel for it. It's sonora. terragenaonline. net (without the space) and I hope you'll check us out. Please message me if you have any questions.'
If anyone has any other ideas on places or ways for us to advertise, please add your comments here! Also, don't forget to add your reviews to the counter so we can keep track of our progress towards our targets. The counter cannot do maths, so you will need to enter a total for it, e.g. if it says '2' and you do 3 more reviews, you should enter '5'
13DH SkiesAdvertising target! Let's get 15 in over midterm!26DH Skies05
This year, the return to Sonora (almost) coincides with the start of November, which is Nanowrimo time. Rather than lose our authors to external projects, for the last few years we’ve been setting Nano challenges.
We have a couple of challenges that will run throughout the month. And, as the weeks go on, we’ll add new ones.
Our month long challenges are:
November’s longest thread: the thread that has the most posts will receive 15 house points for each participant. The only rules are that all posts must be made during November (i.e. no adding to old threads) and meet the site requirement of 200 words per post.
5 Minutes Every Day: We often hear ‘I don’t have time for writing,’ and so one year when I was very busy during November, I set myself the challenge of writing for 5 minutes every day. Even though it didn’t sound like much, it was amazing what I achieved during that time. It did not always result in a completed post, and so this is not a challenge that we will be monitoring, but can be a challenge that you set yourself.
Long time, no see: This challenge is especially to encourage back characters who have been quiet. If you have a character who wasn’t posted during the first part of the term, you can gain 5 house points by posting them anywhere during November.
We will also be setting additional challenges as the month goes on, and we want these to work whether you’ve got one character or a dozen. Therefore, where necessary, challenges will offer two options. Part a is aimed at those with 5 or more characters, whilst part b is open to everyone (i.e. if you only have one character, you can only claim credit for part b, but if you have 6 characters, you can choose which you complete for the points).
Returning Feast challenge:
The Returning Feast will be posted on November 3rd. Either… a) post ALL your characters at the returning feast or b) complete an exchange of at least 6 posts.
Whilst we try to read all posts, it is hard for staff to keep tabs on everything. Therefore, if you complete any challenges, please post an announcement and link below this post.
We did it! Ok, so the feast went up a bit before the last few went in, but I'm willing to count 'Midnight on Friday' as the end of Midterm.
THANK YOU! At the start of the week I was planning to leave some encouraging speech in chatzy about how I had a crazy week, and hoped you'd all pull together and help us get to the target, but I never got round to it. And still, when I resurfaced last night, the counter had ploughed on towards its target. Well done guys.
I really want people to be able to focus on and enjoy nano, so I'm not going to push advertising as much in November. However, I will say it's like writing... just five minutes a day can make a world of difference, so if we can keep that counter steadily creeping up in our spare time, that would be wonderful. I'd be delighted if it doubled over the next four weeks.
All the existing challenges remain open, but to give everyone some more options, especially as we get back into classes...
- Post two of your characters together OR post a flashback to them at home, including interacting with another person
- Between now and the end of November, post 2000 words in class for a single character. This can be split across multiple posts, in multiple classes but must be for one character, so that the challenge is not miles easier for those with multiple characters. This might sound like a lot, but is based on counting up some character contributions during the first half of term.
My longest write-everyday streak was 13 days, but I think I only missed 3 or four throughout the month.
I left my paper with my stats on it at work, so I don’t remember exact tallies but it went something like this:
Everybody: 17404 words (not counting Nathan’s co-write) Jozua ~4500 words in 12 posts; class challenge complete; 6 post thread at RF challenge Jasmine ~3800 words in 12 posts; class challenge complete; longest thread Zevalyn ~1600 words in 4 posts Daniel ~1600 words in 3 posts (2 words less than Zev) Ben ~1500 words in 5 posts; group post challenge Winston ~1200 words in 4 posts; group post challenge Ginger ~1100 words in 4 posts; group post challenge Clark ~800 words in 2 post Nathan ~600 words in one post (plus more that weren’t counted in an currently unpublished cowrite)
All students posted at RF; all current Sonora characters posted at least once, at least one part of each challenge fulfilled.
1Jozua, et alStats and achievements 348Jozua, et al05
January 1st is rapidly approaching, and many of us will be making New Year's Resolutions. So, why not have something Sonora-related amongst them?
These will vary from person to person, as we all have different amounts of characters, time and energy, but anything that ups your participation or development of your characters is a worthy goal. It could be an 'in character' resolution, e.g. to have your character post in clubs or make a friend, or it could be something you want to do as an author, like making specific time in your schedule for writing, or writing for X amount of time every day/week/whatever.
We've got a couple of days to ponder and discuss, but let us know if you make a writing resolution!
I will do one Sonora related activity (read a post/write 100 words/do an admin task) before I go on Facebook on any given day.
This doesn't over commit me on days where I'm already really busy, but I hope to use it to make myself more aware and mindful of how much time I'm wasting on non-constructive Internetting and reduce that.
I did already fail this resolution this morning, as I forgot about it, but i will keep trying!
I am updating the list as per the general consensus, which was that after characters have been graduated for a full cycle, their claims can be reused.
Authors are being asked to pick a new face for preference, and to specifically ask if they want to reuse. Any authors who are still at the site will be asked before claims are reused. Authors may also request that their claims are not released (either all claims or specific characters) and they will be marked as unavailable.
If you would like any of your claims reserved, please contact the address attached, or comment below. The class who graduated in SA15 and above would be open for reuse.