The Introduction

Well, it's been a little over a week now since I was appointed to the position of Recruitment Tribune, and while I've been cooling my jets a little bit, and letting my staff members focus up on the trials and tribulations of Fading Light, we have no exactly been idle during that time.

First off though, a little about myself, because this is likely the last time you're going to hear about me in any of these reports. I do my ego the favour of assuming most people in the DB have heard of me. I only just recently passed my 17 year mark in the club, and have served in any number of positions from Battleteam level all the way up to Justicar. I'm currently Proconsul in Taldryan, wrapping up my time as Right Hand of Justice, and I grade stuff occassionally for the Shadow Academy. None of that however is the reason I got appointed to the position of Recruitment Tribune.

In the really real world, my job consists of creating and implementing Social Media Strategies for a handful of niche web properties, as well as working heavily with Search Engine Marketing and dabbling in Search Engine Optimization best practices and techniques. Hello industry jargon! In layman's terms that basically means that I drive traffic to websites and I try to do it by utilizing the power of Social Media Communities, and when that fails, I pay for it and do my best to make sure I pay the least possible amount for the traffic I do buy.

The doing stuff cheaply is where I hope to excel, because I don't have advertising budgets for the Dark Brotherhood. That's ok though, because while we do not have a large budget to pay for traffic, what we do have is a dedicated fanbase who has been diligently creating a vastly expansive subsection of the Star Wars universe. Passionate fans make every advertiser's job just a little bit easier, and passion is something DBers have in spades.

The Team

One of the first things that I did after getting appointed was to re-evaluate and retask my staff. Something that I believe very strongly in professionally as well as in the Brotherhood is people knowing what they are expected to be doing. As such, I've divided my team into three sub-teams.

Our Social Media Interaction Team consists of Ernordeth Puer-Irae, Lexiconus, and Seraphol Ceartas. These are the guys that you've been seeing taking care of the Facebook and Twitter feeds of late, and they will continue to do so.

Our Channel 4 News Team at the moment consists of myself, and Halcyon Rokir Taldrya. Posting Star Wars news is going to be one of the most important functions of the Recruitment Team in the coming months, and I added Halc onto the team as I knew he could immediately jump aboard and start posting news to the standards I'm expecting.

Finally, we have what I am calling our Ambassadorial Team, consisting of Grand Master Jac Cotelin and Hades. These guys will be our envoys to the greater world of Star Wars. In order to grow, we need to find new ways to get our name out there, and there's no better way to make new friends than by exploiting a shared interest... thankfully, Star Wars is big enough for all of us.

So congratulations and welcome to all the new team members.

The Goal

Here's the part where this gets serious, and I lay out my plans for the position of Recruitment Tribune, and hopefully start enlisting the support, and help from members of the Brotherhood.

Social Media is at its fundamental levels, a social experience (holy crap I just reinvented the wheel). What do I mean by that though? It's not just something you do every day where you spend your entire time tweeting back and forth with famous movie stars/new star wars voice actors. Social Media really takes off in the area of "social sharing", which is me seeing an article or picture that I think is really cool, and thinking "hey, I should share that news/picture/article/information with my friends!"

It's in this area where the DB can do better. We have legions of Star Wars and gaming fans, and we have spent so much of our time directing traffic away from our site. We find a cool link, and we share the link to it on the webpage, and people leave, and only come back.

My goal is to bring people to our site, both members and new people alike. I want our news team to be creating content that shares Star Wars and Gaming news with a spin that is interesting for our members to read on the site. I want our members to be able to create new and exciting content and bring people to DJB.com. I want to share our members work with the internet at large, and show off just what awesome stuff you guys can do.

By making the site more inviting to other people, and by generating content for not just DB members, but Star Wars fans in general to enjoy, we will bring people to our site, make it more natural for our own members to brag about their club, and be less insular in the Star Wars community, and instead welcome other people to our doors... and hopefully, inside.

The Plan

So, that's a hell of a goal, eh? Maybe I bit off a bit more than I can chew, maybe I didn't. Bright side is that I do have a plan for making it a bit easier for myself to handle.. I'm going to make you guys do it. Literally one of the first things I did was request additional powers be granted to the Recruitment Tribune in order to allow me to award Dark Side Scrolls for those who do exactly what I said above: generate content for the site's main page. In that regard, I would like to reference a recent post that our Voice put out there written by a member of the club: The Comic Corner by Gryffon Cantor. This is an example of the type of content a member of the DB can see, and link their friends to. It's type of information that isn't just for DBers, it's for Star Wars fans. This is the kind of stuff I hope to see on the front page of the website in the near future.

Beyond generating content, I'm going to be working with my Social Media Interaction team to be putting forth more content that exposees just how awesome the DB is. Currently, two titles we're going to be bringing back are Warbanner Wednesdays, and Saber Sundays. These will be chances to show off the great work the Herald's Office does in creating truly epic pieces of art for our club, and just one other advantage that being a member in the DB brings with it: custom art.

We're going to be working with Darth Thrustworthy to feature wiki articles like he just did in showing off Turel's excellent article.

We'll be working with the Voice on a few projects to bring our fiction writers to the attention of the wider web, and maybe bring some to us.

We might even try to strongarm the Fist into hosting a couple retro Star Wars gaming nights to bring back old fans.

And we might even try to make Howie stop being a panda.

Ultimately, what it boils down to is this... the Dark Brotherhood, and you the members contribute a great deal of information, of fiction, of artwork. Right now, the vast majority of that work is experienced and enjoyed within our walls. I want us to share, and hopefully, grow beyond the walls ourselves.

The First Steps

So, that was a wall of text, and no mistake. But for now, the first steps are simple... be patient. We're still getting everything figured out, and I am working hard to get a secret project finished and ready for presentation to the DB.

In the coming days, expect to see Content Calls being announced, which is basically me asking for specific content requirements, and interviewing what I'll be nominally considering as "staff writers" for the Recruitment Staff (who will be paid in DSSs).

For now though, just sit back, and enjoy this little bit of fun news... Star Wars Episode VII Finished Primary Filmography last weekend.

The TL:DR you hopefully don't need

• Hi, my name is Yacks, and I'm the new Recruitment Tribune
• Jac, Halc, Ernordeth, Seraphol, Lexiconus and Hades are my team.
• To get people to join the DB, we first need to bring them to our site. We'll do that by generating and sharing awesome content that shows off how awesome we are as a club.
• I want every member with a good idea to be able to contribute to this cause!
• Sit back, and relax. The ride is about to get crazy.