MapleNexus is an emerging site that has taken on the job of hosting the Maple-News community, that’s all well and good. they also promise a resurgence on the news side of things, another great thing. and they seem like a bunch of young blokes, another great thing they are going to learn and grow in ways that will help them in later life.

“What are they doing wrong then”, you ask. Well they are heading in the right direction but they are running before they can walk. The admin, Ryan has started a full frontal advertising campaign twitter/facebook and getting out there and networking. Now before i said they where running before walking, by that i mean the current forum scene for MapleStory is saturated. Every guild and there sisters best friend forever has a forum, and there is frankly no space for any more. People want to get something out of joining a forum, for example Southperry.net – has data extractions and a very intelligent community. Sleepywood has a massive member base although the administrators intentions could be questioned it is the mecca for all things Maplestory. Basilmarkets founder Mr.Curry has done a fantastic job at seamlessly putting in a forum ready to use no re-registration required, So why would members leave these forums to go to one that offers a lesser product then the ones above, well MapleNexus is offering a bit more then just forums, they also have blogs, user made quiz’s, groups and polls – like i said all well and good.

Now what are they doing wrong? all you need to do is look at there twitter stream. (found here) they are in essence spamming the community, wait scrap that they have made no effort to create the community they are just spamming. So i say dear maplenexus, engage your audience, get into conversations that lead back to your site, you run a forum, post interesting stories that have been posted on maple-news and get people talking, social media is a 2 way street, its not hey do this and make sure you like that, its “hey did you see this? we are talking about subject X over here have your say” and please stop tweeting about your damn video its not interesting in the slightest and too long to boot. im sorry if you feel as though im attacking you. please understand that its not personal, never take anything in business personally it will be your downfall.

So to everyone that is thinking about starting up a Maplestory site/forum/community please make sure you can tick the box on the following points.

1. Is there some one out there that does it better then you?
2. Contrary to popular belief, if you build it – they still might not come.
3. When using social media as an advertising medium remember its a two way street, there’s gotta be communication with the people you want to reach.
4. And last but by no means least, PLAN PLAN PLAN! plan where you want to be in 3, 6, 12 months and set goals to achieve within these time frames, it could be page hits, x amount of members ect.

In ending this post, i wish MapleNexus the best of luck with there forum/community site and hope to come across them one day in the future, remember to stick with it!.