💖 WorldEmber FTW: how to increase engagement without spamming
Posting & ghosting leaves a dead atmosphere. Instead of dropping a link and running away, here's how to share your articles so that people actually read them.
Concluding my (not sponsored just fanatical) posts about WorldEmber, this post is all about how to promote your work on World Anvil during the 10k writing marathon in December.
Not sure what this challenge is about? Check the first post here:
TJ Trewin
It's okay (and recommended!) to just enjoy the writing challenge and do worldbuilding at your own pace.
This post will be full of reminders and warning about burnout and this comes from my personal experience of taking part in this event every year since it began in 2017. Take care of yourselves - it's only a fun little challenge 😁❤️
If at any point you are not having fun - stop and do something else.
Ok now let's talk about stats & strats... 👀
As explored in my previous post, How to keep pace without burnout, setting the right goal is important for a healthy, competitive mindset.
Instead of comparing your work, wordcount, or number of likes to others - compare it with your past self! Aim for a new personal best, and if it's your first time taking part in WorldEmber then give it your best shot and set your challenge to beat for next year! 😄
It's also worth mentioning that there are no monetary-value prizes or profile badges for the winners of the Most Liked Article or Most Liked Body of Work. However, scoring high on the leaderboard of likes may catch the judges' attention in each of the Special Categories (of each article template), and you may end up voted as as the community favourite for the Best Body of Work badge!
🤫 My secret WorldEmber strategy is...
💕 Give in order to receive
The more engagement you give to other people, the more you'll receive in return. People often check out the worlds & profiles of folks who've interacted with them.
Go and read other people's worldbuilding articles and leave a like and a genuine, meaningful comment on them - include a question to engage them to reply! Follow authors and worlds that inspire you, and don't forget to expand your reach beyond your existing followers and usual favourites, too.
Avoid like-spamming (liking a bunch of articles in quick succession without reading) because it's a bit rude and when someone checks the timestamps of all those notifications from you - they'll realise that your interactions were meaningless.
⏰ Be there early
When it comes to competing in popularity for WorldEmber, getting your best articles out first is key. They'll be the first to appear on the leaderboards, which will take some time to be manually refreshed & updated after that. When there's not many articles on the leaderboard straight away, you're not up against as many competing articles for attention.
At the start of the challenge, people are looking around to see what everyone else is doing - be the person that inspires them!
📆 Show up every day
The more you show up in the community, the more people recognise you and your worldbuilding - and they'll also come to look forward to and get excited for your latest work!
All things in moderation though - don't push yourself to show up every day if you're feeling burnt out or stressed. Be present when you're feeling your best!
🌟 Stand out
Don't just think outside of the box, repurpose it. Break it down into its parts and refold it into something new. You can still have a trope-filled world or commonly used genre - but add a twist. Present it differently. Ignore the instruction manual and use World Anvil's features for something interesting.
Weird is memorable.
📊 Do the maths
Weigh up the pros & cons of quality vs quantity with your WorldEmber articles.
Higher quality articles may be more appealing and get more likes. This option might be better for you if your goal is to win a certain special category.
More articles gives more opportunities for likes - so if you're aiming for the most liked body of work overall then this may be an option to achieve it. As an example, if your articles typically get 5 likes each and you create 20 articles during WorldEmber, you'd probably get 100 total likes.
🔢 Consider which article templates to do first
In addition to all of my advice above, there's a lot of different options you could take to try and get more engagement on your best articles!
Think about which of these suits your goal best and see what works for you:
- You could prioritise article templates listed at the top of the event stats because those are more likely to be read first.
- You could go for the hardest templates to get in the top likes for based on their number of entries and likes given (such as Character and Species).
- You could try and claim an early spot on an easier template to rank for because they tend to get fewer entries to compete with yours (such as Language or Plot).
- You could play to your strengths and do articles that you enjoy the most first so that your best work shines from the start.
- Or you could tackle the templates you find most challenging first if you have more energy at the start of the challenge.
Likes are not a true indicator of the quality of your worldbuilding - so don't be discouraged if you don't get as many as you'd hoped for!
If you want to jot things down in advance, I made a free (or pay-what-you-want) template for you to plan out your articles and track your progress during WorldEmber! 😁
😄 Be a friendly face in the crowd
People will remember the interactions you have with them (and the community) - so be kind, and help others. The more places you show up, the more people will interact with you. You can still be competitive and avoid one-upmanship!
Reply to every comment you receive, and say thank you on people's profile when you get a follow!
🤝 Collaborate
Be on the look out for writing sprints to take part in and for unofficial mini-challenges run by the community that you can take part in during WorldEmber!
Tune in to other people's livestreams, or hop in a call on Discord (even if on mute) and hold your friends accountable while you worldbuild together. After a set amount of time, share with each other what you've been working on!
🤩 Be contagious
If you want to go "viral" in the WorldAnvil community you need to be contagiously enthusiastic about your own work and what you're doing!
Excitement spreads.
If you're excited about your worldbuilding, I'm going to get excited about it, too.
Tell people what you're working on, show your WIP articles, and share the enthusiasm for what you're going to work on next.
👉 Nudge people in the right direction
Make use of the follow world button (get the BBCode for it from your world settings page) and give people a clear call to action (CTA) to follow. If you want to encourage more comments, leave a question in the Author's Notes section of your articles!
👀 Get a head start
Why wait for December to start when you'll suddenly feel in a rush to have things figured out? The rules state that only new worldbuilding done in articles created during WorldEmber count, but that doesn't stop you from preparing things in advance (but not pre-writing, because that's cheating).
Not sure what you can get ready (that isn't just art/images)?
Gotcha covered:
TJ Trewin
♻️ Sharing w/o spamming
🪶 Author signature
Put an unobtrusive link to your best article (or your world) in your author signature so that when you comment in other worlds/profiles people can check out your work.
🔔 Article notifications
In WorldEmber - everyone is pushing notifications to try and get their work seen. Make yours stand out by adding a descriptive, intriguing, or conversational message when you post - and consider adding a note of what the wordcount is so that people can see at a glance and decide if they want to read it now, or later!
How many notifications is too many?
After asking the same question each year among my friends and followers, the general consensus has been "No more than 1 per day please!".
📘 Global notifications
To promote your best articles, make use of posting a global journal entry (using anvil coins, the daily login reward). It will make your post show up in the global dashboard as well as letting your author followers know! 😁
Remember to include a clear CTA so that people come to your world to interact, rather than just like the journal post.
📑 Global article content
Depending on your World Anvil subscription tier - make use of the global sections in your world settings! You can use this to put an articleblock or link to an article that you want more interaction with. (Bonus tip: use a variable to update it)
🗨️ Sharing your worldbuilding on Discord
Being an active part of World Anvil communities on Discord is one of the best ways to get your work seen! Whether it's the official one, or one of many smaller community servers - here's how to self-promo without spamming:
- Check the rules of the server, find the appropriate channel to post in, and check for any pinned messages with further rules. If you're not sure, ask a moderator.
- Join in or spark up some conversation in the server first and ask other people first what they've been working on lately, talk about their work, then share yours.
- If posting in a share channel where most people link dump - make yours stand out by adding extra context. Give a teaser and a little TL;DR, mention the wordcount length, include a question. Give people a reason to click.
- Don't message or DM people directly out of nowhere and ask them to look at your worldbuilding. It's incredibly impolite and could even get you banned from a server. Instead, find an appropriate channel and request feedback (on something specific) so that people can take a look at it.
📷 Posting on social media
You don't need to post on every single platform, just pick the ones that are best suited to your type of worldbuilding content. Apply the same tips I've listed above and you'll get people to engage with your articles.
Share the love, lift up others, ask questions, start discussions, and sprinkle in your self promotion as a treat.
📢 Spread the word!
Last but certainly not least, just talk to people! In person or online, regardless of whether they're into worldbuilding themselves - tell people about your goals, tell them about your progress and how it's going, ask them if they'd like to join in the challenge, too!
Share that enthusiasm 😉
You've got this!
📰 Bonus posts
My newsletter subscribers got to read these SUPER-EARLY (in August!), but now these are all available to everyone right now:
- 🔥 Prepare for WorldEmber (how to set a goal you can actually achieve)
- 📚 Things you can prepare in advance (without cheating)
- 📜 How to boost your wordcount (also w/o cheating) to achieve your goal
- 🧯 How to keep pace without burnout
This was the last (planned) post relating to WorldEmber and it will be back to actual worldbuilding blog posts now 🥳🎉
