Silence Is Deadly

By Sanya Weathers

We in community do not rail against the turning of the tide. Community people build rafts and float along. Right now, the tide is in when it comes to the ocean of noise – information, data, press releases, etc. The fact is, in the year 2011, typical gaming and social media consumers do not think that “no news is good news.” Neither is silence golden.

If you’re going to pick a cliché to live by, here, the one you’re looking for is “nature abhors a vacuum.” If you’re not talking, your users are – and absent any information from you, they will just make stuff up.

But… but… but I’ve written approximately one million words on the topic of companies that release too much too soon. I’m droned on and on about the perils of talking about anything unless the material is milliseconds from going live (preferably live on your test platform). I’ve said at least once a week for my entire professional life that unknown deities will kill puppies with big anime eyes if you just randomly start babbling on the internet where every mental fart is forever!

I know. But that’s what we professional community people do – we cope with contradictions and make it all work out.

The main thing to keep in mind is that there is a spectrum. If you’re really in a news blackout, think of your communication as hold music. Hold music may be annoying, but it’s better than silence or anything that makes people wonder if they’ve been disconnected. The hold music analogy is especially apt when you consider the “your call is important to us, please continue to hold” message. I do not know one human being on this earth who believes it. Every time people hear that message, their reaction is “if I was so freaking important, you’d have hired more than one phone rep.” Accordingly, don’t constantly interrupt your metaphorical hold music to say how important everyone is and how you’re looking forward to sharing information. (Note: It is always appropriate to respond to someone to say either of those things. It’s just not a good idea to initiate those discussions, especially if the news blackout is likely to be prolonged.)

Contests are always good hold music. Screenshot caption contests are a personal favorite of mine if you’re supporting a game – keeps everyone’s mind on the product itself while avoiding topics you can’t discuss. If you’re making some other kind of product, consider naming contests, or feature suggestion contests.

Up a level from hold music is “some information, not a lot.” Neophytes, when coming off a long stretch of silence, desperately want to release heaps of information in a big showy display. Don’t do it. In the age of 24/7 conversation, each individual point can be its own post/tweet/discussion point. Or you can alternate between text releases and image releases. (Always do text before images if you alternate – if you release the image first, it’ll just raise a lot of questions and either force you to post the text on the same day or risk the consumers… you guessed it, making stuff up.)

The exception would be if your content is so tightly interrelated that each component is useless without its context. Again, for games, an example would be a PVP system. There is absolutely no point in breaking down the PVP system into components and releasing each bit separately. The people who would accept a piecemeal release of PVP system info aren’t following a pre-launch PVP game.

The final level is “information glut” right next to your product launch. Here, your risk is having the information lost in the clutter. I recommend focusing on one distribution channel, and using your other channels to promote the primary with links. You can always go back when you’ve got nothing new to say and elaborate on some of those links.

The days where you can just say nothing if you’ve got nothing to say are over.