Thoughts on recruitment methods

First off, I don't know where to put this thread so i'll just put in here and let the mods move it to where it best fits.
I'd like to ask what everybody's opinion is on recruiting via public chat announcements at the ge. I've tried gaining new members this way recently and found myself questioning whether or not its actually beneficial to the clan.
Here's my reasoning:
The biggest thing I've seen when recruiting this way is the very high chance of trolls joining with the sole purpose of being disruptive. Anybody who sees the message and actually would like to give the clan a go joins the clan and sees it in chaos with hate messages being thrown around and people being kicked - New comer leaves, troll gets what it wants and perhaps worst of all, any conversation in the cc is halted.
Now the way I see it, there are three main types of recruitment:
Forum based - A person is seeking a clan and goes looking for one.
Friend based - the recruit and recruiter know each other or are on good terms (maybe A helps B then A suggests the clan)
Public announcement based - the clan info is forced on anyone with an open public chat whether they want a clan or not.
The first two are similar in the fact that the recruit has no reason to be purposefully disruptive because they have gone looking for a clan or are on good terms with someone from the clan. (this is of course not absolute, there will always be spammers on the internet)
Public announcement seems to be similar to how a nice person can instantly become rude when a telemarketer calls their house.
So far just hopping world to world advertising is about 1:1 ratio of recruits:spammers joining.

Just collecting peoples thoughts on the what I see could be an issue.

I believe the most effective method of recruitment is by being open and friendly.
Not by spamming recruitment messages as we did a while ago with the recruitment train, this is counterproductive as it causes more harm than it does good. You've explained this all too well in your post.
On top of that are multiple reasons why I don't approve of the recruitment train anymore but that's a different topic.

Let's return to this topic,
I believe the most efficient method of recruitment would be explained in the following example:

A few weeks ago I set out to complete the Heroes Quest.
To do this I joined the Shield of Arrav CC, which as many of you know isn't the most sociable place to be. I did my best to turn this around a bit and started having conversations with many of those who were residing in that CC.
The result?
Some of those people, and myself, had fun and I even got to invite a couple of them.
I am not sure if they are still in the cc but at least they got a taste of our Clan.

This was a less agressive method of recruitment that instead focussed on forging a relation between possible new recruits and the recruiter.

I believe this is what recruitment ideally should be like, for me in the least.

I highly prefer recruitment via forums, as the people we target are actually looking for a clan like ours. The only drawback is it takes much more effort and that effort gets put upon the few that do the bumping. If everyone contributed and bumped a day, we would remain on the first page of the forums, accessible to those looking for a social / mature clan.

As far as the GE promotion goes, it is how I build the clan (previously v west), but is tricky. As you both eluded to, you need to be subliminal when marketing the clan. You don't want to bombard potential newcomers with information about the cc, but instead, make them feel like they're joining with their free will. 

What I encourage people to do is when they've made a friend IG - via slaying, bankstanding, training, or whatever it may be - is to invite them to the cc in a friendly manner. 

Last summer we would average 20-40 members in the clan, and maybe hit 50 at peak. When fall came around, we would average 60-80, and 100 at peak. 

Right now, we are averaging 40-60 and peaking at 80-85, so I expect a rather large cc this fall. 


Large-scale recruiting isn't for everyone, but there is no reason each member couldn't invite one newcomer to the clan each day. If they decline the invite, that is their choice, but you tried . And if recruiting isn't for you, feel free to give our CC thread a BUMP .


P.S. OSRS Jmods ran a strawpoll awhile back. 11,000~ people replied, and when asked about clans, 32% reported they were not part of a clan but were interested in joining one. With that being said, there's no way 32% of OSRS uses the forum, so using alternative methods to recruit will be helpful if done right.

That is all.

it fits well here. don't worry.

Just to add to this topic, I don't actively recruit by introducing osrs advice cc to everyone I meet. I get to know them first and assess whether or not they would be a good addition. It's then that I introduce them and offer the clan.

If we are smart enough with the trains (or public recruiting or whatever u wanna call it) we can actually get some members. By that i mean, having like 5+ mods online and doing the whole thing as a clan. E.g:we divide ourselves in 2/3 groups of 5/10 people that go to different worlds (this way we reach more people) and as people join, we, the mods, focus on getting the trolls out of our way as fast as possible and keeping the good ones. Now this may not even work out very well, but i suppose on one of those, we could get like 3-10 new members quite easily. But it might take some effort. (Hey, i joined the cc by seeing advice spamming. Therefore we got our best member with a public recruiting, so it might be worth the hassle (and we also get to hit people that arent looking for a clan, but wouldnt mind being in one))
Now, about kat's idea... thats just... wrong hahahaha i mean, ok thats a public cc, but we are actually stealing people from other places (which is actually not very well seen in the clans community, trust me, we wouldnt want some1 inviting people to their cc on ours, and when that happened, ahem... it didnt have quite a nice ending)
About what gloves said, thats just being a little to picky hahaha. I mean, u obvsly shouldnt invite some1 u bought some lobs from to the cc, but hey, let them give it a try, if they dont like it, or cause any trouble, thats all right, we can deal with that, but we had a potential member there. We dont really get to pick the ones we get from forum/public recruitments, so try being less picky and invite more people if thats what we are aiming for as a whole clan.
Now that im done with that, imma adress something that might be a little issue (or not, idk). We have many members, or actually people in our cc. The numbers are rising, but the members arent imo (yea ik, i barely log in bla bla bla, but thats what ive been told by a couple of ppl already), so my honest advice would be, rather than focusing on numbers, focusing on keeping those we have, and growing as a whole, ofc we cant close the recruitment nor am i suggesting that, but if we change the way we are focusing our efforts, we might see something that isnt that bad after all. Some numbers im going to throw from my last few logins, we had like ~60 people, 3-5 being 3 bananas and up, 1-2 being 2 bananas, 1-2 being 2 bananas, a couple of smilies, maybe 5-10, and the rest.. u know... 0 bananas and no starfish. I personally liked when we were like, idk 30-50, but we knew each other so well, then again, i havent logged in, so i might be the only one with this point of view, maybe u are all as united as we were, or even more.
might have wrote more than i intended, but i guess its for the best?

I never said anything about joining other cc's, I spoke only of the official non-clan related cc's. such as the Shield of Arrav ones, or mini-game cc's (although I do not advise minigame recruiting. People are often not too friendly there.)

i think you also need to remember the cc can only hold 100 people, we are constantly seeing 80+ an evening now we are coming towards the end of summer.

Remember Kamika, although you feel all the unadded members takes away from the brotherhood, many are lurkers.. Think of the cc as a talk show.. You have the core that participates and lead it, and the rest are audience members. We shouldn't view having a large audience as a bad issue

Word of mouth is how RuneScape grew and its how the clan will grow. I bring in members by meeting people through my playing but i found it through the forums. But with people seeing a active community doing recruitment trains it makes them want to join.

I don't see recruitment trains as that bad, last time we got some new members and i think it's worth to kick a few trolls out while gaining new members. However i prefer to keep that a very rare thing, maybe if we feel like it after an event. And i also prefer mouth-to-mouth recruitment.

If I bump into decent people skilling, on slay tasks or bossing I ask them to join. For me I find first hand recruitment the most effective way for myself to get people in. I'd say a good 5-10 people I asked to join visit regularly, with a few of them added/ranked. Guaranteed to not be trolls, sociable and all for group events etc as they've taken the time to talk whilst on a task/at rogues den etc. If I was still looking for a mature clan to join I wouldn't look into spammed messages at the g/e. Forums or word of mouth are definitely the way to go; I joined due to the great clan OP. As I've already mentioned in another thread, a clan dedicated youtube channel could be another useful addition.

One simple thing that is often overlooked is our forum thread...as mentioned before getting looks from people actively looking for a clan like ours....It is our lifeblood for recruiting.
While I dont want to overdo it..I think regular reminders in chat for our mems to bump our thread is appropriate.

Using the runescape forums and word of mouth/personal recruiting are good methods that I think deserve the bulk of our effort. Instead of public announcements in-game I think a better recruitment strategy would be using reddit, both to advertise the clan and to advertise streamers in the clan. Reddit and Twitch seem to be the place most of runescape hangs out, though I could be wrong.

Reddit and Twitch both have huge OSRS-communities.
The problem being that recruiting for clans on Reddit isn't allowed and the Twitch Streams which attract most players are the famous ones.
Such as B0aty.

Unless we somehow get to recruit B0aty (and co.) in our clan or have him advertise for us, twitch won't be all too amazing for gathering members.

I'll say something to him at breakfast. Dude still owes me for cheating off my chemistry paper in high school

Another issue is quality versus quantity. Do we really want members if they don't fit the culture of the clan? Lots of reddit clans or twitch streamers have trolls in their chats