When we first announced publicly that we were launching the Collins Coalition four weeks ago, we did a fairly minimal amount of promotion to get the word out at first. We wanted people to know about the CoCo, but our marketing channels were pretty much limited to word of mouth, our email contact lists, and my own personal Facebook page. This has worked just fine in the early going - we've definitely let the world know we exist, and we've got a solid base of people interested in climbing on board. But long-term, we know this approach isn't sustainable. Which is why we're now looking for ways to scale up.

Today, I'd like to go over our plans for social media marketing. We've spent the last few weeks researching this from a few different angles - we've looked into what sorts of social channels are effective for marketing a new organization in general, what types of content play well on each, and perhaps most importantly, which channels are popular these days with the Scrabble community in particular. After much hemming and hawing, we've decided to narrow our scope down to three sites. For the time being, we'll be focusing on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Here's a quick rundown of what to expect from our presence on each platform.

Facebook (@cocoscrabble): Because it's obviously the most common place where today's Scrabblers congregate online, we expect that Facebook will be where we do the lion's share of our player engagement. Every time we have a news update to reveal or a piece of content to share with everyone, it'll be on our Facebook page, and we'll be following the comments closely, ready to respond if anyone has any questions or concerns. We expect Facebook to be the main place people go to check CoCo news and chat about it with their friends. We look forward to a lot of fruitful conversations!

Twitter (@cocoscrabble): Twitter isn't as Scrabbler-frequented as Facebook is, but it definitely serves a purpose - it's a great place for sharing content and giving quick-hitting news updates as stories develop in real time. If you're interested in seeing live coverage of our tournaments, you'll definitely want to follow along. Our first tournament, in Hood River, OR, is only three weeks away, and I plan to be writing coverage throughout the weekend, including pairings/standings updates as well as notes on everyone's interesting games and cool plays. In between tourney weekends, our Twitter feed will also be a great resource for catching up on blogs and other CoCo content down the road.

Instagram (@cocoscrabble): We don't anticipate our Instagram presence will be quite as relevant to players' everyday lives as Facebook and Twitter, but having a presence is nonetheless important. It's a long-term play - Instagram is the world's fastest-growing social platform, and its highly visual nature makes it a great place to show off the look and feel of our organization. It's where we can establish a unique CoCo style. While Facebook is a great platform for marketing in the here and now, Instagram is where we can slowly, carefully start to build a brand.

With all three of these new initiatives, the goal is ultimately the same - we're looking to build a real community. This means bringing together current Scrabble players and uniting them under the CoCo umbrella; it also means attracting new players. The latter is an area where, by and large, Scrabble has been in a rut for the last decade-plus. It's possible to turn things around and bring in a new generation of enthusiastic Scrabble players, but it's going to take work. We happen to think a social media strategy is an integral part of that work.

If the above strategy sounds vague, that's because so far, it is. We don't claim to have a fully formed plan for social media in place from day one - we want the rest of the community to chime in, share their ideas, and help us shape the CoCo brand. So if you have ideas for our social strategy, such as certain types of content we should be creating or a certain brand image we should be presenting, we very much encourage you to share them. Better yet, get involved with our communications team or our growth/outreach team and play a role behind the scenes.

At the very least, we hope you'll follow along. When you do, you'll have access to all future CoCo news and updates, lots of fresh new Scrabble content, and a wonderful community of people who enjoy the Scrabble tournament scene as much as you do. We hope you'll find it all worthwhile.