How to beat Team Liquid. (The brand, not the MSI Finalists)

Team Liquid is a juggernaut in North American League of Legends right now, and if you are a team in the middle of the standings, you have to ask yourself, how do I manage to steal some of their fans? What do I do to make people want to root for me rather than the 3 time champion, MSI finalists that are supported by the amazing work done by 1UP studios. If I had a foolproof plan to do this, I wouldn’t be writing this article while making minimum wage, but I do have a theory.

Step 1: Ride the TL Wave

So, Team Liquid is walking off the greatest international showing that North America has ever seen at an international event. This is a massive buff for both Team Liquid’s marketing, but for the region as a whole. More people will watch NA, more people will be more invested in NA, there are more fans in the pool of loyal consumers for you to find. While TL clearly benefits the most from this, that doesn’t mean that your team should be left entirely behind.

At the end of the day, part of your team gaining more fans, is your region having more fans. So, any time an NA team is doing well internationally, your team should be there, cheering them on. Cloud 9 provides the perfect template in how a team should be reacting to a fellow NA team being successful internationally.

This tweet does a lot of things for Cloud 9. Firstly, it simply gives your team exposure by hoping onto the train of MSI Finals. From eyeball analytics, I would say an average C9 tweet gets around 100-200 likes, updates and high quality memes tend to sit in the 400-1000 range. This tweet was sitting at 6.2k. In fact, basically every tweet C9 had about MSI was sitting at the 1000 to 3000 impressions mark. A significant increase from the normal C9 Twitter impressions. So, while C9 may not have been the team at MSI, their support of TL brought fans to them either way.

Additionally, there is a lot of good will to be gained by supporting your region. It is fairly safe to say that, come international tournament, people stand by their regions before their own individual teams. By always supporting the entire region, you gain a lot of good will from the fans of other teams who align with LCS during their international play.

So, while your team may not be a Rift Rivals, take the chance to cheer on the teams that are there, because a rising tide raises all ships. Also, just support your region, because ya know, region pride. That is also nice.

Part 2: It is Social Media, Sponsored Ads

All of your social media content should not be updates, results, and merch drops. It seems like a lot of teams don’t use their social media as liberally as maybe they should. At the end of the day, personality is king right now. If your Twitter is just updates and merch, there is no personality to the team, meaning you have no brand identity. Your social media is the voice for you to interact back and forth with fans, so it should be used to tell the fans what your team is. What message do you want to send, and say it.

Are you going to a super serious team? That is fine, use your social media to give good measured responses, through a little bit of trash talk around.

Are you going to be a meme team? Then post weird videos and gif responses to your fans

Are you going for some edgyness? Make some comments about how Yuumi needs to be deleted and how TL is overrated

The point here is that, your social media account should be more than just telling your fans what you are doing, you need to use it in order to tell people who you are. So, find out what you want your teams personality to be, and then do that.

Part 3: Community Growth

This is gonna be short and sweet cause this also comes down a lot to social media usage. Please, for goodness sake, acknowledge your fans every once in a while. They are your lifeblood. Sponsors, players, assets. It all means nothing if at the end of the day, no one wants to support you. So when someone posts some dope fan art, like it or retweet it. When you post that you are getting ready for a game, respond to some of the love you see in the comments. I am not saying that someone has to sit and go through and reply to every message/interaction that you receive, but at least respond to some of it. Fans like to see that their love is acknowledged, and it is crucial to let your fans know you appreciate them.

This however, needs to go beyond just social media. There should be a tent and proper staffing to tailgate before LCS. Likewise, teams should really make an effort to host things like watch parties or meet and greets whenever possible. I understand that unlike OWL, there is no regional ties, and it is a lot harder to set up things outside of LA, but if the resources are there (ex. Clutch in Texas), then go for it. Bringing people together is one of the draws of esports, and people flock to events where they can watch games like any traditional sports fan. These events should see a higher presence, especially as esports begin closing in on the mainstream.

Part 4: Transparency

100 Thieves are proving to be the poster child for why you need to be transparent as a team. Coming off of Spring 2018, they should have been set to become the hottest new org in the LCS. Cool merch, a trip to finals, a roster full of some fan favorite players. It should have been easy to transition that into one of the most successful orgs in NA. Then came the collapse of Summer 2018, when Cody Sun got subbed out for no really well explained reason, getting smashed by TL in semis, and going on to be a punching bag at Worlds. The fans were pissed, no one was happy, and the explanations were simply not forthcoming.

Welcome to, what not to do as a team. Please, for the love of god. Do not do that. We are going to return to my favorite example Cloud 9 for a more properly handled roster debacle. You sub our basiclly all of your star players, make it clear when it happens why, and be open about the changes you are making to your team. Were people pissed about it still when C9 was in last, oh hell yes. Were they leaving the org and supporting other teams though? Of course not. They knew what was happening, they knew there was a plan, and this gave them faith that the old C9 would return and that the team wasn’t just doomed.

I am gonna write a for fully fledged out comparison of these two teams situations at a later date, but for now, lets just leave it at, you really need to communicate with your fans what is going on.

Wrapping this up

It can be daunting to be looking at the LCS right now, dominated by TL, C9, and TSM. It is hard to figure out where your place is in that league atm. Just because you are not a big 3 team, doesn’t mean you don’t have a space. So, get the positive PR when you can snag it, interact with your fans and find your personality, and most importantly, make sure people know who you are, what you stand for, and what you are doing. You don’t need to be the team for everyone, you just need to to be the team for your niche. So find it and succeed.

That is gonna be all from Geeto for right now. As always, constructive criticism is appreciated, and if you wanna talk about this article or anything esports, join me at my steam (twitch.tv/thegeeto)

Articles will be more consistent now, just got super busy and was having a lot of life issues. We are here though, and I got a lot of stuff on the docket, so stay tuned