10 Tips To Keep Your Clan Active

By: Sonny Verdini
Submitted: 2007-01-17 15:46:31
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Causes of inactiveness

"Know your enemy" as an old saying goes. If you want to use the right tool to counter inactiveness, you will first have to find out what causes the inactiveness and in which area. An example: if your clan members barely visit your clansite and forums, countering this with organising an internal ladder isn't the best option: they won't read the announcement for it. Better it would be to contact a few randomly selected members on an instant chat programme, i.e. MSN, ICQ and the like, and see what his or her personal interests are. With that knowledge, you will be able to group your clanmembers based on common interests. Thus starting a few forum topics which are related to their common interests usually cures the forum inactivity. Fact is: you will have to be creative to find the cause of an inactivity. Chances are slim a member will come to you with the message: "hi, you can cure my inactivity by installing a blog for me." If it would only be so easy... ;-)

10 tips to keep your clan active
This is probably the part of the text you are actually looking for. However, I would suggest reading this entire article as I cannot guarantee the following 10 tips will work if you simply use them as misguided missles.

1. Host internal tournaments or ladders
Usually a never-ending, member-only ladder can be used as a preventive measure against inactivity. It keeps both the clan activity in-game and on-site -- i.e. clansite -- stable. This because members will play ladder games whenever they please, they will upload the result of the match as a recorded game, and they will comment on each others performances, strategies and the like.

2. Have weekly meetings with members
Many clanleaders underestimate the power of common conversation. Having a weekly or bi-weekly meeting with your clanmembers in a chatroom can do a lot of good to the morale -- not to mention the sense of unity -- amongst the participating members. Of course, you ought to invite your clanmembers on a volontary basis. Try publishing the invitation for such a meeting on a place which your clanmembers visit often. I.e. if they don't check forums often, use word-of-mouth instead: tell one member you organise a meeting, and he will spread the word to fellow clanmembers he encounters. Have such a meeting in a chatprogramme or a teamspeak programme -- I personally prefer teamspeak above a chatwindow with my clanmembers as it raises the "sense of communicating with another human being".

3. Have on-going topics in your forums, i.e. "forum games"
Having one or, if you like, a few on-going topics in your clan forums usually causes both site visitors and clan members to return. Just google for the words "forum games" and you should be finding yourself an ocean of examples. Just to pick one for the lazy ones out there: the neverending story. One person posts a few lines of a made-up story, the next poster continues the story with his own few lines. This goes on and on. Not only this measure is considered fun by forum junkies and spammers -- i.e. people who post awfully much -- it also gets your clanmembers an oppurtunity to work together on something.

4. Have surveys and discussions
Not every clanleader is as talktive as your aunt is. For those who have no clue on how to start a conversation on a chatprogramme with your fellow clanmembers, a survey can be the solution. You could use a survey or a poll to find out what your members like, dislike, adore, hate and the like. All you have to do is create the poll, and design the voting options. If you are not familiar with creating an effective poll, then I would suggest to keep it basic. Give your voters three options: black, grey and white. Black being the hate or disliking something, grey being neutral about the issue, and white being a fan or in agreement of the matter at hand respectively. With polls you can usually launch a discussion to sort out why someone voted on a certain option. This deepens out the poll and can get you valuable information as a clan leader on the likes and dislikes of your clan members. Just make sure the discussion doesn't go off-topic, though!

5. Create a chatlist / Email list for your clanmembers
Creating a chatlist doesn't require much effort and allows all clanmembers who wish to participate to interact with each other outside the usual channels, those being the game the clan is involved in and the clansite. An example of a chatlist is a MSN list: let each member post his MSN address as he pleases. Add all those addresses in one single file for all clanmembers to view and away you go. Chatprogrammes, as said previously, are known to enhance the sense of unity amongst clanmembers.

6. Encourage the creation of interesting articles
This one sounds harder than it looks like. What it basically comes to is that you reward the members which are active in the game the clan is involved in. Active clan members have their own playstyle: they have considerable knowledge of the game they play, they know strategies, tricks and the like. Why not design a system which rewards those members by sharing their knowledge with their fellow clanmembers. The reward can be a small token of appreciation -- usually this already is enough. Its kind of hard to describe, so you will basically have to see for yourself. For Legio Romanus, I have such modest award system in place. I combined the clan roster with it. A member gets a "medal" next to his name for each 5, 10, 25 or 50 articles he writes respectively.

7. Allow space for self-employment
Perhaps a stereotype, but many clanleaders are control-freaks. They constantly want to know what is going on in both the gaming community as well as in their clan. Because of this, some of them are reluctant to "outsource" simple tasks to their clanmembers who -- in a perfect world -- openly volonteer to assist. I.e. if you have a clanmember you can really trust 200%, why not give him something to do which can be compared to the trust you have in him? Let this person do the recruiting for you. Why not let the clanmember who knows a lot of about webdesign administrate the clansite? You don't have to lose control over it completely, if you are able to share your responsibilities as a clan leader with your fellow clanmates, you should be well on your way in keeping the interest and loyalty of those members in case.

8. Make use of their hobbies
Besides playing a game with fellow clanmates, clanmembers tend to have more hobbies. Some of them being sports, some of them in which a computer is involved. Try going after the last one as a start. If you find out that one of your clan members likes making graphical art with programmes such as PhotoShop, why not give him a seperate forum or a page on the clansite? Title this new page or forum "graphical arts workshop", and let this clan member design graphics as he pleases. To get the other members involved in this, why not suggest to the PhotoShop junkie that he creates signatures for clan members and site visitors on-demand? :-)

9. Replace members who left or retired
This is a bit of a harsh measure, but an important -- and nessecarry -- one. Always see to it that when a clanmember retires from the game the clan is involved in, or when a clan member leaves the clan, that he is replaced with a new recruit. Recruits are as blood in a human body to use a nice metaphore. Red blood cells die all the time, and are constantly being replaced by new ones. Without this system, a human dies, and so does a clan. This is so obvious that it makes it so easy to forget. ;-)

10. Show interest in members
As a clan leader, you ought to have a pro-active stance at all times. You cannot be overwhelmed by a sense of defeat or demotivation. If you catch the inactivity disease, the clan is surely doomed -- or at least, you are. Always show interest in your clan members. Show interest in what they have to say, in what they complain about, show interest in their hobbies, work, school, you name it. A clan leader ought to be the example for the entire clan, besides the clantag, you must be the pride of the clan, the parade horse, so to say. :-) To achieve this, you must attempt to have sound relationships with all your clanmembers. Do not lock yourself away with only Senators or the best players in your clan. Don't try to cure the healthy ones, cure the sick ones! The inactive members require your leadership and example. Do so at all times and you will have to use anti-inactivity measures at a lesser frequency.

Consequences of inactivity
I wanted to name this chapter "consequences of long-term inactivity", but looking back at my own experiences and observations on clans, I decided to leave the "long-term" away. If you would be in my shoes, you would be baffled to see how fast inactivity can spread. Hell, it spreads faster than AIDS in Africa! For all humanitarians out there, please don't feel offended, irony has it that inactivity has many similairities to AIDS. Both cannot be cured, only treated so it becomes more bearable. Both don't show up as soon as someone is infected with it, and both can lead to death at an unknown time in the near future.You read that right: clans can die. Inactivity is the AIDS of clans. Without an alert clanleader who constantly tries to counter inactivity, the clan will surely die a slow, and remarkably quiet death. It really depends on what kind of clan you are running, for which game, the overall status of the community of the game, the members in the clan, and so on and so on. This makes it basically impossible to say how long it takes before inactivity takes its toll. Usually, when it starts taking its toll, its too late already. So read the above carefully once more, bookmark this page, print it and stick it on your toilet door, as long as you do not forget that inactivity can be made bearable for all!

Sonny Verdini goes by the online nickname of LR_Aurelius_Sancti and is clan leader of Legio Romanus Online Gaming Clan. An extended biography can be found on LR Clan Blog.

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