What is the best way to recruit new guild members?

[Scyion]

I am a member of a small 10 man semi-casual raiding guild and throughout WotLK we ran into problem when people were unable to make raids, because we just weren't big enough to replace them. So the officers have decided that we needed to fill our guild with people for cataclysm. Currently we are not targeting any group in particular (we will take any level, any class, any spec). Today I made an effort to try to get some new members, but was rather unsuccessful. I mainly tried spamming (yeah I know I hate to do it) in both trade and guild recruitment channels for new members, but I am unsure of what else to really do.

So my question as the title says what is the best method for recruiting?

[Quexar]

Well... Spamming might make people not want to join your guild.. good to have a target audience like 60+ only or something. And Your guild name is directly related to your raiding lucky luck.. remember The sillier the name the higher chance you have of clearing raids. The cooler you try to make your guild name the higher chance that people will think you are 10 and incompetent. In my personal guild experience it helps to be willing to help gear players, because a newly turned 80 could be an amazingly good player but because they are a fresh 80 and undergeared raiding guilds might not want them.

[Deleted]

Don't spam trade chat, thats the worst idea possible for recruitment. Put yourself in the position of the raider who wishes to join your guild; they do not want to join a guild that is disrespected because they spam trade chat.

- Post on your realm forums (offical/unoffical).
- Have an officer use a recruitment macro in trade every 15-30 minutes. It's fine to recruit in trade chat but make it more of a routine rather than a task.
- Seek out players specifically. If you see a player perform well in a pug then ask them if they would be interested in joining your guild.
- Make yourselves known: wowprogress.com, fan sites etc...

Find out what your current raiding roster is like and work around it.

If you have 15 raiders in the guild raiding 10 mans and they are all at 50% attendance then obviously you need a larger roster to support regular raiding. The key is to over-recruit and have people sit out (to an extent) rather than under-recruit and not be able to raid.

Then figure out which classes and roles you are specifically recruiting. Players are often more interested in joining a guild if they feel they have a higher chance of being accepted; if you state that you are recruiting all classes then people may feel unsure of their chances and may not bother and so I personally wouldn't recommend taking that approach.

[blahism]

1. Don't ever spam /2
2. Don't ever spam /2
3. If you spam /2 those people come as fast as they went and "real" raiders will never join.

Define your guild.. if it looks like another /2 spamming guild, it is just another /2 spamming guild. They come and go and who wants to put effort into something like that?

Use wowprogress to keep your recruitment needs open, post on the recruitment forums here, use your realm forums on wow's website and use the correct faction recruitment forums on your realm website.

Most importantly get your guildmates out there helping you out.

[sithorion]

do a correct english post in /2, say it once every 10 min: describe what kind of guild you are, what you're aiming for, what kinda progress you have, and what you're searching for. Then when people whisper you, do some serious questioning about why they wanna join, why they're guildless, and inspect them. that way you root out the baddies, and accept the goodies also join some VoA pugs and stuff, and be funny and helpfull, and people will remember you guild name..
etc etc, you get epicx

[Greevir]

Spam /2 as much as possible! Be sure to inform them that you have a BADASS tabard and many bank tabs. Cause as we all know, that is all that matters when looking for a guild.

[Hyrfjord]

Basically be friendly with people, and asking people that you know trough pugs that are guildless might have some result, and a badass tabard helps too :P

[Nöx]

Gearscore.

[Deleted]

The best solution is to open a thread in very popular cataclysm discussion forums

Oh an other points, that the others above me described earlier

[Geckomayhem]

Wish I knew the answer to this. Trying to form a casual guild has garnered very little interest. I stopped posting a guild recruitment message in general and the guild recruitment channel because so few people showed interest, and of those that went through the basic application process, only two remain. So yeah, a guild of three doesn't really do much, even though we are casual; and especially since the other two members are on a different timezone to me.

Perhaps as Cataclysm rolls around you will have more opportunity for the simple fact that guilds will have so much more attraction through the perks. Could be hard to weed out the baddies, but at least you have direction and vision. Building a raiding guild is a darn sight easier than telling people that you don't have a focus on raiding due to time constraints.

So few casual players want to even be part of a guild, but for some of us, we have no choice in the matter. That's life.

[Justifier]

Ask people you like to join when you group with them. Run alot of pugs.

^^ This. I took a "friends at work" guild through BC raiding with pretty much just LFG PUG Recruitment.
We also ran at least a heroic (back then) with them before letting them in.

[Shelly]

Do you have any female members? Do they sound sexy? Better yet ARE they sexy? Post raid vent-sex goes a long way to keeping members ....

Kidding.

Anyway, I think the best way is if you find yourself pugging someone in, to offer them a slot if they perform well and don't annoy the guild. Make it a week probationary period if you like and dump them if there is friction. It's no big.

While raid pugs are the best to pick up, also consider offering runs through dungeons to pick up a good healer or dps - presuming you have your tanks covered for fast ques.

[Rottenbeaver]

kidnap them.

[Preliatus]

IS YOUR GUILD ACTIVE?! OUR GUILD IS MUCH MORE ACTIVE THAN YOUR GUILD! WE HAVE 500 MEMBERS ONLINE AT ONCE! WE HAVE 5 GUILD TABS, A TABARD, A WEBSITE, AND AN INTERNET RADIO STATION! DOES YOUR GUILD HAVE THAT!? PST POWERLORD OR POWERLASS FOR INVITE!

*whispers GL and gets invite*

Hi!
ASFDUIGHER HAS JOINED THE GUILDx20

Sorry for caps.. didn't realise caps lock was on until now.

[Freytor]

Make a recruitment thread in your Guild Forums. Make a proper post describing your guild briefly, who you're looking for, etc. Don't spam it. Once every 5-10 minutes. Best time to post it is your raid times.

[Deleted]

Try and get you and your officers known as helpful people on the realm and make sure than no one with authority in your guild is antisocial, it will drive off members and potential members.

The best way used to be running PuG's and inviting guildless heroic runners, probably still is but the cross realm stuff makes it a tad harder. PuG small raids like VoA and try to get members like that.

When advertising yourself don't advertise yourself as something your not, I keep seeing "Social raid guilds which only accept people with 6/12 in ICC" and to me that isn't very sociable.

[Stannislaus]

You are a bit late in the expansion to try and fill a roster. The people raiding ICC right now probably won't want to switch guilds, and the people who pug it every week would have found a guild already if they were interested in that. Not to mention a large proportion of players have stopped playing altogether due to stale content and are just waiting for Cataclysm. That's not to say its impossible to do, it will just be much more difficult then say at the beginning of an expansion or just before a significant content patch.

My suggestion would be to try and find a guild in a similar situation, and jointly raid or merge with them until the end of this expansion. Then when cata drops, try and fill out your roster by meeting and questing with people as well as advertising. Guild website? Check.

Good luck.

[Scyion]

First of all thank you all for the tips.

I am in fact an officer in the guild, and will be one of those leading the push for new members. As I said we are looking for people more for cataclysm than to finish out what is left in wrath because we don't want a repeat of wrath for our guild. At the moment we were not looking just for people ready to raid, we were planing to basically take what we can get and assist them however possible in getting ready to raid. Most of our active members enjoy running people though things and helping out with gearing. We even have a few that will go out of their way to find out info on a spec/class they don't play if you need help figuring something out.

[Doug]

Well... Spamming might make people not want to join your guild.. good to have a target audience like 60+ only or something. And Your guild name is directly related to your raiding lucky luck.. remember The sillier the name the higher chance you have of clearing raids. The cooler you try to make your guild name the higher chance that people will think you are 10 and incompetent. In my personal guild experience it helps to be willing to help gear players, because a newly turned 80 could be an amazingly good player but because they are a fresh 80 and undergeared raiding guilds might not want them.

No.... you have it the other way around. Say there was two guilds, one named Ultio Mea Est, and another made FuNAwEsOmEDuDeS Hmmmm, Ultio Mea Est wins by far PvE wise.

[Eyildr]

Being nice always helps. Having a helpful and friendly environment in your guild is a major plus.