How to build a Great Clan News Program

A Clan News program is one of those very fundamental tools that often get little respect if any at all. I’m going to show you how to take this very simple concept and make it into a program that helps you recruit, helps involve and retain your members, and promotes your clan. With the social networking revolution more clans are taking their inter-clan communications to Twitter, MySpace, FaceBook and so on. This is a great idea, but it is no replacement for a clan website news program. You won’t be referring new recruits to twitter, you won’t be using your teams facebook account to pass along team meeting dates. Your clan members depend on the clan website and postings to stay in touch with events, promotions, and general happenings within the team.

Building the Clan News.

The basic concept has always been to provide general-public viewable updates on the main page of the website that relate for the most part to the clan or game you play. You will often see a list of promotions, maybe a patch release, sometimes new meeting dates or times, that sort of thing. Far too often there are only a few news items listed in a single category that nobody pays too much attention to, they shoot strait to the forum and avoid main page material all together. Thus the news program for the clan doesn’t really exist, it just fills space on the main page to give the appearance of activity. Your clan news program has a lot more potential than this, and it can be VERY useful if you pursue it as an important thing. Lets get started on the right foot here, pick a member (or ask for volunteers) to serve as the clan Media Officer. This person can create your news content for you, it provides a meaningful position for the member, and helps the clan administration focus on more pressing issues. With a Media Officer in place, you need only pass along ideas and updates for the member to create news material from. You should also encourage your Media Officer to write his/her own material as often as they like. Depending on the person and how they handle the job, it may be necessary to have some ground rules. This could include the kinds of news you want to be posted (the kinds you don’t), how long they should be, and how often they should be posted. The specifics greatly depend on your team and your preferences.

What the news is made of.

Exactly what you want displayed is up to you, but below is a list of ideas that are being used, some that rarely get used, and a handful of ideas that I have never seen before!

Game Related:

- Patches & game updates – Developer Interviews/ Reviews – New mods/maps/tools

Opinion Related:

- Clans favorite maps/weapons/mods – Any POLL related statistic from polls of members – Web or Server Admin interviews (within clan) – Tips & Tricks list provided by clan members – Graphic or coding tutorials provided by clan members

Clan Specific Items:

- New promotions/awards/job-well-dones – Scrim/League results – New members/retiring members – Server/site relates change or new items – Open positions within the clan (recruiting officers, forum moderators, so on) – New affiliations or community sites where the clan is included

So thats Content, now what?

Take a good look at TribeHaven. Basically this site is nothing more than an “Online Clan Newspaper”, and I am the Media Officer. You will find links, articles like this, banner ads, and lots of useful little goodies all over. Pretty much everything has an image and a link in it. To really get some success with a clan news program pump goodies in with your content. “Give ‘Em Something To Click” as the saying goes, add in images where you can and have fun with it. If you run advertisements on your clan website, the news articles can be a good place to put them, you can also link to your hosting providers and perhaps get some extra assistance with server funding. They make a good place to ask for donations, as well as offer links to the forum or recruiting areas of your site for possible new members who read your news.

Promoting the News.

If your clan is running an event, like a special weekend event on the server, then that could certainly qualify as an informative item worth posting on community sites. You can add that the team is recruiting, but you probably wont have to. If it sounds like a cool event and you have a catchy image to go with your post, then just posting the event in the clan or general section of your games community hub can draw in lots of traffic. I also allow for clan news and events to be displayed on TribeHaven Click Here: When posting promotional news releases, don’t over post. Creating a message for a special event is awesome, but there is no need to post every single thing that runs on your clan news program. Another important point: Use an IMAGE. Even if you just use the team logo, adding an image to a post makes a HUGE difference for readers. A vibrant and well built news program will bring in new members as they will see, click, and engage in your news content. It will keep your members happy with good ideas, relative content, and even jobs for some. Your news can help promote your clan if you post interesting and special event stuff in high visibility places, thus engaging other clans as well as new members. As with anything, the more effort you put into it, the greater the reward.