HOW TO GAIN LIKES AND BE COS-FAMOOSE!!!

HOW TO GAIN LIKES AND BE COS-FAMOOSE!!!
(A.k.a. A few musings on how to grow a facebook page organically without spending money, irritating people or shooting yourself in the foot)

We’ve probably all been in a position where we’ve watched some random page’s like count skyrocket overnight. How did it happen? Their reach is through the floor and dropping. They’ve had nothing go viral. How did they do it? Chances are it involved their wallet.

I can understand the temptation to buy likes. Every direction you look people’s pages are blooming in the great cosfame migration of the 2010s, and you find yourself stuck gaining a few followers a week if you’re lucky. You can’t understand why your like count isn’t moving. As far as you can see your posts are no different to Miss 10,000 over there.

And you think to yourself, ‘If I could only get more people to see how great my content is then I just know they’d love it and my page could really thrive and grow and contribute.’

So you find yourself a ‘Like’ farm. Unlike sponsored posts, it’s anonymous – none of your friends will know what you’re doing. They might suspect but they won’t know. And there is a certain stigma around promotion when it comes to cosplay pages, paid or otherwise – it’s a narrow rope to walk if you want to reach people without being frowned upon. ‘Like’ farms don’t cost a huge amount either. A few quid and you can double your page following in a matter of hours. The first result of a google search tells me I can get 1000 likes for the low, low price of £13.99.

Stop right there.

That click could very well kill any chance your page has to grow.

‘Who am I to say this’, you ask. ‘Nomes Cosplay is nobody. She’s had a page for years and only has 2.5k followers. Blah blah blah’

And that’s true

But you know what? I may be small but I actually get pretty great reach compared to a lot of people. My reach number is regularly a quarter plus of my ‘Like’ number and my posts average 30-50 likes and comments. I didn’t know that was great originally. For a while I was frustrated that facebook didn’t let everyone who followed my page see every post – they’d liked my page after all, so why shouldn’t they see it? But over time and over many a beleaguered conversation about ‘the demise of facebook pages’ and ‘facebook only being in it for the money’, I began to realise that I didn’t have it too bad.

I don’t promote.

I don’t sponsor or boost posts.

I don’t buy likes.

You guys – and I love you for this – you’re here because you want to be here. You’re here because we share a passion. I started this page as a space to share knowledge and I post what I love. WIPs, costume breakdowns, tips, slices of life and photoshoots. And I share my inspirations – the costumes or techniques I come across that leave me in awe. It’s a diary really. One day when I’m old I want to look back at my page and enjoy the memories.

A few years ago the big fad to gain page followers was contests.

‘Like this post and like my page and leave a comment and you could be in with a chance to win!’

And you still get a lot of-

‘Please follow my page. L4L (Like for Like)’

-on various pages and groups.

It’s a semi-successful tactic in that at least it targets towards a likeminded audience – especially when you compare it to like farms. But even though some of those people will discover how completely awesome you are a lot of those people aren’t there for your content. You haven’t grabbed them yet. Chances are they haven’t even seen your actual day to day content. They’re there for the contest and will never interact with a single post. Some of these ones will unlike your page once the contest has ended. These ones are actually a blessing in disguise. These guys are no longer cluttering up your reach.

Which gets us down to the meat and the bones of it.

People think they want likes but what they actually want is reach. They want to be noticed. Everyone wants to be noticed – it’s human. We want to matter in some small way. That’s ok. But isn’t it better to be noticed consistently by a small bunch of people than to be unnoticed by a big, huge number of people? Isn’t it better to contribute somehow to a few people’s lives than to, well… not?
What I’ve noticed over the years is that people who grow their pages for the sake of growing their pages end up with a big ‘Like’ number but a scroll down their feed at the interactions per post makes for sad viewing.

But why is this?

Logically a large following should lead to a large reach right?

Well unfortunately the two can be mutually exclusive.

Whilst no one truly knows the mystery of the facebook algorithm this is what I have I have gleaned.

And if I’m right, as far as I can see the key is to get the ball rolling.

‘Ok, but what does this have to do with my large like number but poor reach,’ you say.

And I say this. If you have gained a following of people who follow your page because they want free stuff or because you paid them and their page is just a spam account rather than a real person or you offered them L4L so they liked your page just because they wanted to gain the extra like on their own page – then those people are not going to interact with you. If facebook only pushes new posts to a small number of followers at a time and the majority of those followers are not ones who actively want to take part in your page then they will not react and facebook will push your post no further. So by bloating your like count you are effectively diluting your audience and making your post invisible from the people who actually follow your page to see your content – the very people who are most likely to interact with you and get something from your page.

If people interact with your post not only does the reach to existing followers increase, the reach to potential new followers with a mutual interest increases too.

Person 1 interacts > Person’s friend sees they have interacted > Person’s friend likes what they are seeing and feel confident that their friend is endorsing the page > Persons’s friend decides to like page too.

In summary the key is not to just gain ‘Likes’. It’s to gain the right likes. It’s to find the people who want to share something with you.

Do you know what people like Yaya Han, Jessica Nigri, Shappi Workshop, Nikita Cosplay, Calssara, etc. will say if you ask them how their pages got so big? They don’t know. It just happened. When they started they didn’t work hard at promoting for promotions sake. They worked hard doing something they loved. And week in week out they kept putting out quality content and helping people who asked for their help. And it just so happened to pay off. They were exceptional. One, then two, then more things went viral. People shared them. People mentioned them.

‘Yeah but X’s stuff is amazing and they have like no followers so what makes these guys better?’

Luck. That’s all. It’s the very last ingredient for success and that cannot be bought. We all know someone who’s amazing and yet has a small following. Heck I know dozens of someones. Have you heard of the mythical Hollywood syndrome called ‘a break’? It’s the same thing. You have to be exceptionally talented. Turn out content that people want to see. Have a great personality.

And you have to be lucky. And you have no control over that.

So I suggest not spending your finite time on this earth bartering and paying for empty likes.

But what CAN you do?

1. Remember your page isn’t just about you. It’s about what you can do for other people. Are they there to learn? Are they there to be entertained or to laugh? Can you dazzle people with your amazing attention to detail? Do you have awesome photoshoots? Are they there to see you naked? It could be all of them or it could be one of them or it could be some other reason entirely. Different people have different niches and you can decide on yours. If you can offer people something they want, then they will want to see your page.

2. Content is king – Keep your content consistent and keep your content high quality. Every time you post ask yourself – if I followed this page would I want to see/read this? But don’t sweat it too much because this is your page and it’s supposed to be fun. So be you. After all you can’t always tell what people want to see and the stupid selfie you took might suddenly have 100 likes.

3. Share posts to RELEVANT groups – So you like RWBY? Then by all means make a post or share a post in a RWBY fanpage. You can even link back to your page. I recommend however not making your page the focal point of the post. Again – Content is king. Make the post about sharing a passion or sharing information. If you keep posting in the group, sharing your work, fandom knowledge and commenting on other people’s threads consistently you’ll be amazed how many people start to recognise you. Let them recognise you for the right reasons.

I recommend not sharing to more than one or two groups at a time or you are going to annoy not just strangers but your friends too. I can’t tell you the number of time I’ve been scrolling down my newsfeed and seen six of the same identical post all from the same person. It’s annoying and it doesn’t do them much good because a lot of those groups they are sharing to have duplicate audiences who won’t find getting spammed very endearing. Also facebook tends to group all those 6 posts into one mega post and just lets me know one or two of them in detail and then says ‘oh by the way there are four more posts like this if you want to expand and see the same thing a few more times’. I never do. Choose the right groups and share moderately.

4. Interact – talk to people. These can be people at cons, people who message you, people who comment on your work, people in groups, people who share a mutual interest. Show you are thankful to have those people there. Show you are interested. Be humble. Be helpful. Be the person you wish to live with because those choices are with you for the rest of your life.

5. Personality – Most people opt to be some form of themselves on their page. You can reinvent a persona if you prefer and if you can keep it up. Whichever you choose be genuine to that personality and inject it into your content and interactions.

6. Don’t worry about your Like number – It’ll grow. It might be slow. It might be fast. Either way it will go up. Personally I ignore my Like count. I’ll occasionally raise an eyebrow at an unexpected jump but ultimately I see it as something that is not totally within my control. All I can do is keep plugging away and let the numbers fall where they may. If I can’t control it then I’m not going to worry about it.

In conclusion – there are ways to gain likes if you truly feel you need them. Make it a way you can be proud of.

If I can help just one person in some way through something I post then as far as I’m concerned it was worth it.

Just one.

1+1=2 ad infinitum

Competitive cosplay part 2: Judging

In order for a contest to happen there has to be someone or a panel of someones in place to decide who is going to take home the prize: The Judges.

Who those judges are is entirely up to the event running the contest

The judges can be anyone from a known competitive cosplayer, the previous year’s contest winner from that con, a random celebrity guest who happens to be at the con, a popular cosplayer, … – in other words it varies. For smaller cons I’ve attended cons as a panellist before now and then been rope into judging last minute because the planned judges didn’t show up or have gone walk about. The focus of these smaller contests is usually on fun and giving people an opportunity to showcase their work. I think of these contests as the practice runs. The stepping stones for contests like ECG, WCS and Eurocosplay as well as the up and comers like CCCC and CWM where the judging panels tend more towards experienced competitive cosplayers and well-respected crafts people. I like seeing international judges at the big contests as they are then more removed from the local country politics effectively eliminating a lot of griping.

Judging criteria

There are no standard regulations in place for cosplay contests other than those the con chooses to imposes. Likewise some contests will set aside pre-judging time where you can spend 5-10 minutes one on one with the judges showing and discussing your costume with them up close whereas in other, usually smaller, contests sometimes the only time you have with the judges is the 30 seconds you spend on stage.

Costume judging is often broken down into categories such as:

• Craftsmanship: What techniques have been used and how well have they been applied
• Accuracy: In cases where the cosplayer has emulated the design from a video game, anime, movie, etc. how faithful have they been to the source material
• Effort: This is a category I find dubious to quantify I must say – making a shirt might be high effort for one person but easy for another. This category is supposed to quantify how hard the cosplayer has worked to achieve their finished result.
• Cleanliness: How professional is the costume finish, are their raw seams or unprimed foam visible? A clean but simple but clean build for instance can score higher than a complex but messy build
• Complexity: How difficult was it to realise the costume?
• Performance: How entertaining was the cosplayer on stage be it well thought out poses, to a fully choreographed skit.

Some contests go so far as to provide a breakdown of the relative importance of each category e.g. 50% costume and 50% performance.

The rules will often tell you what percentage of your costume must be made relative to bought. Whilst the bought parts will therefore not be held against competitors, if it comes to a deciding vote and one competitor has made more of their costume than the other then that can be a clincher. Find a balance and if you do buy parts of your costume be honest and acknowledge them. If you want to minimise the chance that a bought part of your costume might influence the judges then make that bought part less meaningful – no sensible judge would expect you to make your own pair of black ballet flats for instance.

Some competitions, usually at the smaller or inexperienced cons have no judging criteria. This is where it is particularly important to have 1 or 2 experienced judges on the panel who can put together a judging plan quickly for all the judges to follow. In cases with no references you have to rule out accuracy judging as it would be unfair – the judge cannot know every character in infinite detail by heart after all. In cases with no pre-judging performance becomes important as the few seconds a contestant is on stage are then the only opportunity the judge has to look at the costume – this is often where people find themselves seeing bigger ‘obvious’ costumes winning though any judge worth their salt will be looking for a full package. The judge in this case is having to make quick decisions: What techniques have been used? How well have those techniques been executed? How complex is the build? How well finished is the costume? Are the contestants practiced/entertaining (not always the same thing)?

And if the judge does have a reference, without pre-judging it’s a case of playing head-tennis between the paper in front of them and the person on stage. And yes of course, the judges in this case have to ask themselves the question: did they buy it or did they make it. Usually it’s obvious but it can cause many a judge headaches and doubt. In general judges very much want to be fair in their decision making after all.

From the competitor perspective you can think tactically based on the criteria. If there are no references and/or no pre-judging for instance, then the quality of your work need to be more obvious. Don’t always take the easy or obvious route when constructing your costume. Think outside the box as to what techniques you can use. Keep the judges interested. Choose a competition costume that allows you to show off the breadth of your skill range. If you make part of your costume and aren’t quite happy with it then take that as a sign and do it again. Never stop learning. Keep reading up on techniques and methods online.

For me 80% of a competitive costume build is research and planning. That includes techniques I can use (I can cast this bit, I can do this in embossed leather, I can embroider that, laser cut this, sculpt there, etc.), materials to choose (for a live action character try and match that fabric to the one used in real life as closely as possible; for very detailed animated characters study the look and the flow of the characters outfit; for more cartoony/flat styles often found in manga, Anime and comic books this is a chance to think about the character practically – are they rich or poor, futuristic or historical, if the only existing reference exists of the front then how would you imagine the back to look in real life, etc.), etc. That isn’t to say more complicated costumes are better than simple costumes. Look at Eurocosplay (an international contest with representatives from across Europe) where Edward Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist) and Sora (Kingdom Hearts) have taken the crown – outwardly simple outfits, but the devil is in the detail. The contestants went out of their way to find ways to showcase techniques within the boundaries of those costumes and executed them fantastically – here pre-judging played to their advantage and their performances were also excellent.

Pre-judging

If you have time with the judges for pre-judging, plan for it. Figure out what the important things you need to say are in advance – it’s incredibly annoying when you forget to mention an important facet after judging is over. If you’re nervous or struggling to remember take a few cue cards with you until you feel more confident. Personally I quite like to take sample boards with me showing a breakdown of the materials used in the costume. I find this helps to keep me on track with covering the techniques I’ve used. A savvy judge will help to guide you through judging to help you show your costume at its best – they will check all angles, flip seams and ask questions.

If the competition calls for a progress book then use that to your advantage to call attention to details that might be hard to see on the worn costume. Often the judges have only five minutes to spend per contestant or set of contestants in an organized pre-judging so help them to see you at your best. Judging cosplay is not easy. It is a comparison of a very eclectic skill range and trying to rate one against the other has caused much discussion amongst judges who are often constrained to very tight time frames in which to give the result. You can help yourself and the judges by portraying yourself concisely and clearly.

You can also help yourself by knowing your judges. If you know judge A is a particularly keen sewer and judge B is hot on armour then make sure your sewing and armour are up to scratch. Know the jargon so that you can discuss it properly and give the judges faith in you and your skills. At the same time if you know a judge is less familiar with the techniques you are using you may want to provide a little more in depth knowledge of how that technique was applied.

Unfortunately, you have no control over where pre-judging will take place. I’ve been judged outside in 40^oC heat; I’ve been judged in the middle of a crowded con hall filledwith echoing noise; I’ve been judged directly behind the stage. Best case scenario the con will have a small room set aside for pre-judging where you and the judges can easily hear each other, the lighting is flattering, and there is enough space for the judges to move around you and your costume

At the end of the day it’s important to remember that judges are people too. No more and no less. So communicate with them and interact with them as people.

The contentious question

Everybody knows it but nobody is saying it. Cosplay is subjective. That means the judging of cosplay contests no matter how we try to be fair and unbiased is also subjective. A cosplay that might win at a contest with one set of judges might not even get an honourable mention with another set of judges. Whilst there are sometimes clear cut winners often the judges are in a wrestling match between several different cosplays that could all take a prize for different reasons. But that’s why the judges should always be a panel with a range of skills so that they can compare and discuss and finally come to a conclusion. But that’s also how you know that if after a contest a judge tells you you were close to winning an award, then that’s the truth: you really were close. SO keep entering. Keep trying. Because only those who enter can be in with a chance of a prize. And this is why at the end of the day you shouldn’t enter the contest just to win prizes. Enter contests for love of the craft or love of the stage or love of the character. And if you do get a prize, well, that’s a bonus then isn’t it.

 

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Please feel free to chime in with your own thoughts in the comments whether you agree, disagree or have something more to say. If anything particularly key crops up I’ll edit this article to add it in.

Competitive Cosplay part 1: What, why, who, where and how?

 

In my time as a cosplayer I’ve had the privilege to be on both sides of the judges table in both large and small cosplay contests. In this series on competitive cosplay I’d like to share some personal insights from my last few years of competing, things I’ve learned through my pitfalls and highlights, and hopefully encourage a few more people to take to the cosplay stage.

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Competitive Cosplay part 1: What, why, who, where and how?

What are cosplay competitions?

Cosplay competitions involve being assessed by a panel of judges based on a set of criteria. These criteria can involve the execution