Indie Game Marketing For Introverts – 3 Tips For Social Survival

My fellow introverts if you were looking into marketing your indie game I have something awesome to show you, and that and so much more coming up. What’s up guys, Tim Ruswick here from Game Dev Underground. If you’re new here, we post videos on marketing and motivation for game development, so consider subscribing and hit the bell to make sure you get notifications when posting videos which we post daily. But today we’re going to talk about indie game marketing for introverts and this is based on a blog post that I did a while now ago it was probably a couple months and it was title the same thing, Indie Game Marketing for Introverts 3 tips for Social Survival and so I’m going to share those tips in kind of my my thoughts on those still today because one of the things that I had struggled with you know is I really was not very good socially for a very long time.

(Video Transcription)

And I always considered myself an introvert I always felt like people would drain me and they would drain my energy being around them, and I like to be alone, I like to like recharge my batteries that way. And weirdly I ended up running a marketing company so I had to force myself into some of these social situations. Like I’m not kidding when I say phone calls literally used to terrify me. I would get a phone call from a client my heart would start racing I would have to ignore the call because I was so anxious that I could not answer the call.

And usually I would email them and say sorry I missed your call what did you need or something like that. It took me a long time to build up the courage to to call back and then to eventually answer and then now I actually prefer phone calls. So that was a you know that was a big that’s not easy to do to go from that level of anxiety around something like phone calls to preferring phone calls, as a means of communication.

So my top number one tip for for marketing that works for me for introverts was to pick the medium that works for you. So in my phone call example, phone calls just they weren’t working for me. When I was in that state of not wanting to communicate with people I I was really nervous I was really anxious but and my brain would go blank when I would talk to people phone calls just didn’t work for me and so I stuck to email. And the same thing when I started using social media like a Twitter I like the passive nature of Twitter even if you’ve been around Game Dev Underground you know we used to do live Friday chats. I didn’t like that.

I didn’t like having to be in one place 6 p.m. On a Friday to talk to everybody and then having for an hour trying to discuss stuff with everybody and communicating and get everybody to talk and interact and all that stuff— gave me anxiety, and I would think about it the whole day at 6 p.m. And I would like I would be really I had to be set up and ready and all that, I didn’t like that. So one of the things that I actually did was I moved to youtube, because youtube is more passive for me. I can I can film 5 videos at a time and post them 5 different days in a row, I can wherever I’m at like if if I need a video for tomorrow and I don’t have one I could just whip out my phone and like literally record myself wherever I’m at. The medium just works better for me right?

And back in the day when I was an introvert I actually couldn’t get on camera so that wouldn’t work for me either back then so I stuck to you know like Twitter to communicate people and email for actually communicate with clients. So just think about what works for you right? Like you don’t have to use all the social media platforms, you don’t have to use all the different means of communication find what works for you as an introvert what you’re comfortable with where you feel the most powerful and use that.

For me now and actually I mean beyond phone calls I actually feel more powerful in person, I feel especially at an event if I’ve come to the event I feel like I’m me I feel like the extroverted side of me now, and so it’s more powerful but I didn’t start out that way. I started out with just email right and I needed to stick to that for a long time while I kind of built up my tolerances for all this other stuff. So find what works for you and stick to it, that’s that’s number one tip for introverts.

Two, a lot of social interaction for introverts can take courage right? It’s scary, it takes facing your fears sometimes if you’re scared of you know meaning people or what you’re going to say or or if you’re going to room and you just like stand there nobody talks to you read like a networking event or something. So one of the things that I did was I would schedule my courage and that’s tip number two. It’s hard man like it’s especially when you’re scared like you’re not scared of people but you’re you like it’s just uncomfortable, it’s anxious, it’s it’s not a comfortable position of be in and scheduling that time can can work well.

Like it can cause anxiety for sure like when I would schedule the chats at 6 p.m. It caused anxiety but it was much much less anxiety and was much better than forced social interaction that would happen to me randomly right? Like I remember like random friends seeing me at like Starbucks or something or like some not a close friend but like someone I knew that would just give me anxiety cuz that I have to be in this conversation I had to talk to this person, and like I don’t I don’t know what to say I haven’t seen them forever, like you know, situations that I weren’t prepared for always drained me way more than situations I was prepared for.

And so when I started with phone calls even though they were so scary for me, it helps a lot to have a scheduled phone call with a client. It helps a lot to have a schedule phone call with you know a press interview or whatever whatever it was I was doing. Even with friends to schedule ok Tuesday at 4 we’ll hang out, that helped me a lot helped me get past my fears of like these phone calls or in-person interactions because I wouldn’t have to worry about them happening randomly. And especially with clients like some clients would just randomly call me and I would fucking make me anxious as shit I hated it.

But as I started realizing that okay scheduling helps better so I would I would tell the client that I would make sure that was clear and I would email them like, hey let’s set up a call for  4 p.m. Tuesday or whatever and it was much easier for me to deal with. So pick your medium right but the mediums that you think would be beneficial but scare you or are kind of you don’t quite have the courage to do yet, schedule them. Schedule time to you know write tweets or do whatever.

Schedule your interaction, schedule your social-ness if you will, just schedule it. So yeah it’s a little anxious leading up to the point but it’s a lot easier than random forced interaction or feeling this need I need to mark to my shit I need to market my shit and then not doing it then you feel guilty for it and all that so scheduling it it makes it a little more manageable.

Tip number 3, prepare materials in advance, and this is really important this is kind of like scheduling but it’s a little bit different because for me one of the reasons that I would have a lot of anxiety when I would go and try and market my stuff or talk to a client or whatever it was, would be from the fact that I was kind of unprepared, and I was kind of relying on myself to be able to get to the conversation all in my head. Now I’ve built the ability to do that over time in fact, like these videos I just literally I sat down I talked to the camera stuff comes from my heart.

But originally it was not easy I had to have a script I was like super camera shy I had to do like takes all that was really complicated for me. Dude I wouldn’t even comfortable taking pictures myself it took me two hours to get the courage with my camera when I was in San Francisco to film myself in front of other people like that’s like it was terrifying. Okay two hours I’m not even joking I’m not exaggerating that. So being prepared for a certain situation being prepared for what it entails even if you can’t cover everything that you need to be prepared, help me a lot.

So for example if I was meeting with a client right let’s say I was going to build their game, because I do freelance game stuff, one of the things I would do is I would research their company, I would write like three lines three notes on what I like about their website or whatever, I would come up with a few game concepts, I would have them listed out with their different stuff, I would have points ready for the meeting. And so when I met with this person I didn’t just have to figure out everything to say, I can actually go through my notes and say okay well let’s talk about this let’s talk about this what do you think of this idea what do you think of this, and being prepared really really helped me a lot it helped me a lot with the interaction, helped me a lot with that stuff so same thing with like networking right?

Like knowing that I’m going to go to this place, knowing the interaction that I’m going to have I prepare questions to ask people, I would prepare a like beyond just like who are you what do you do like I would prepare actual questions for certain type of people and that helped me a lot because I could I could recall these questions. Sometimes my brain would go blank so I would keep like a little post-it note or I have a little tiny I don’t know where’s that but I have a little tiny moleskin notebook that fits in my pocket which I used to keep around a lot for reminding myself of that stuff.

But this also works again for like tweets preparing your entire like if if tweeting out gives you anxiety because I don’t used to me for me like you have a hundred people following you and you’re scared of like tweeting and for those people that are past this it seems like that’s weird, but I know for people in is very real right like it’s feels scary. Preparing all those tweets ahead of time you can write  tweets at one time and you can schedule them out with buffer or with any one of these Twitter tools out there and then you you only have to do it once a month, so that kind of combines scheduling and preparing because you’ll say the first of the month you can schedule out your whole month of tweets.

Now in development when you’re like working out loud and that kind of stuff you can get complicated because you know it’s not you want to share the stuff the most relevant stuff but you can actually do this in work with a delay right? Like you can you can schedule the next month tweets to post last month’s content, people don’t know the difference and it’s really not important the specific details of that stuff as long as you have content marketing as long as you get that out there as long as you share the stuff that gets people talking about you.

And that interests them right and adds value to their life. So preparing is really really important and I think out of all the different things I’ve mentioned here as an introvert preparing has really helped me a lot. Whenever I feel anxious or I feel unsure about specific marketing or a meeting or whatever it is preparing a little bit for the meeting usually makes me feel a ton better.

And I notice too is a really big impact on people especially in like in client meetings but also you know like on Twitter if you post every day and you get a screenshot of your game or a new feature or new something, people look at that they don’t realize that it’s all scheduled they just see the end product and they’re like wow this guy’s got his shit together or you know this guy knows what he’s doing. It makes you look more consistent it makes you look like you you are very serious about what you’re doing.

Whereas you know it’s hard to tweet every day. It is man, especially like if if it has a social factor to it it makes you anxious or whatever you know and Twitter is just an example but you can use this for everything I use it for youtube. I don’t I don’t film every day usually sometimes I do but I don’t I film a lot of videos at one time and then I post them once a day.

So it makes me look really consistent right like it makes you go I go out how does this guy film my videos every day, I don’t film videos every day I just I scheduled them out usually I’m way ahead on the videos that I post for you guys because I want to make sure that it’s consistent and from the outside, it looks like it is consistent it looks like I do this daily, it looks like I have everything ready to go but I’m just I just know how to prepare stuff I know how to be prepared for a situation I also know how to prepare for you know like if something happens if the power goes out if the internet goes out if I have to make an emergency trip to LA or any other city or you know if you know anything can happen random shit could happen.

So just being prepared is always a good tip but it’s especially good tip when it comes to introverts because I know that usually eliminates a lot of the anxiety from my life being prepared I don’t have to dread like every day you know interacting with people if I can schedule my interactions. And like I said this has gotten a lot better a lot of people don’t even realize that I’m an introvert when they meet me. It’s hard to tell these days like it’s just because I communicate with people so much, I’ve done it so much and I’ve been you know this is a completely different subject for different video, but I don’t think introvert is a permanent thing that’s like you or that and you or that for eternity. I think social skills can be learning, I think extraversion can be learned.

Yeah like solitude is good right like especially some people just like their alone time, I like my alone time but it doesn’t mean that I can’t be social, it doesn’t mean that I can’t be effectively social it doesn’t mean that I can’t do marketing, some people believe introverts are just not good at marketing and that’s not true I’m an introvert I built the whole marketing company. So that’s all my thoughts for today, I hope you guys found it useful until next time once again I’m Tim Ruswick. Leave me a comment if you have any top tips on how you as an introvert interact with the world or some of the things that you’ve learned while marketing as an introvert because I always love to learn. But until next time i’ll see you guys in the next video.