#WeAreTheCommunity FAQ

So on Friday morning, we, along with FM Central, Guido Merry, Chris Darwin and more, launched the #WeAreTheCommunity to try and help FM content creators promote, discover and easily share each others work.

And we have had some really great responses to it. Already, we’ve been seeing lots of people using the tag and getting involved. But we’ve also had some questions, queries and quizzical tweets that have shown us that keeping the thrust of the launch to podcasts alone was pretty dumb of us.

So here’s a quick FAQ which explains what we’re doing with #WeAreTheCommunity a bit more and hopes to answer those questions a bit better.

Why did you set up #WeAreTheCommunity? 

We set up the hash tag because we felt it was getting more and more difficult for both a) us in the Football Manager community and b) the likes of Sports Interactive who support the community discover new FM content.

Twisting SI’s #WeAreTheManagers campaign ever so slightly to our advantage, this tag is intended to be a quick, easy and friendly way to share FM content and hopefully help sites big, medium and tiny get their work out there.

Hang on, why have we only just found out about it?

Well, to be honest, we only had the idea a couple of days before we announced it. A group of us were spitballing about the fact that we’ve felt it trickier to get our FM content out there, so we thought we’d try doing something and see if anyone else got on board with it.

There wasn’t an intention to exclude anyone or not tell people about it – far from it. We simply wanted to put it out there, see how people responded to it and then take it from there.

Well, what’s the point of a hashtag then? We’ve already got plenty like #FMFamily, #FMCommunity and even #FootballManager to use

 Simply put, hashtags go out of fashion. Twitter is a platform about immediacy, what is in the moment and what is trending, so hashtags will, after a certain period of time, fall out of popular usage.

The best example we’ve got of it is #FF. Follow Friday still happens in the FM community, but across most of Twitter #FF fell out of favour a few years ago. Fewer people look at it, so fewer people engage with it and that means it has less impact overall.

#WeAreTheCommunity is, therefore, about renewing FM community hashtags. We hope it’ll give fresh FM creators the chance to share their work with a fresh hashtag, helping them to be discovered more easily by those lucky enough to have a bit of influence online.

Do I have to use the hashtag to get discovered by you or other sites, podcasts or Youtubers?

 No, of course not. This is a device for helping us to discover people more easily and effectively, but we will keep taking direct recommendations to us on Twitter and we will keep looking for FM content ourselves.

#WeAreTheCommunity is intended to be helpful to the wider community and we hope you’ll use it. But if you don’t, that’s cool and we certainly won’t stop promoting amazing things we find that doesn’t have the tag.

Ok, I want to get involved – what do I do?

 t really is as easy as adding #WeAreTheCommunity to your FM content tweets and keeping an eye out for it online. We’ve already started retweeting posts, youtube videos and more featuring it, but you’re welcome to use it to both promote and discover work too.

And we’d love it if you do. The reason why we came up with this little campaign is to try and help the community, not just us. So if you’re running a site with a billion followers, are a bunch of mates looking to get their work out there or you’re one person with ideas and want to get involved, simply clamber on board.

And what’s the long term game plan?

Well we’re going to see what happens over the next month. If people are positive about it, we’re going to look into seeing if we can take it to another level and create other resources to make the most of it.

If it doesn’t, well then there hasn’t been any harm done. But if you like what we’re doing though and want to help, please use the tag to help it grow.

One last question – the hashtag is a bit long, isn’t it?

Yeah, sorry about that. But if the idea takes off, what’s to stop #WATC ruling the world?

Listen to more about #WeAreTheCommunity on the latest episode of The Deep Lying Podcast below.