This ones are the first babysteps of the process, but they are first of all for free, and they work. It is a slow process, so you have to be patient and constant. You can find a lot online about each of the given platforms, but if you are just moving your first steps into this, as we did a couple of months ago, checking this list out might probably help you a bit we hope!
It is probably not complete, there are many more places out there where you can say what you wanna say, but begin from here, that should already take some of your time, believe us ;)
Cheers!
IndieDB
http://www.indiedb.com/games/empires-in-ruins
Summary : Nice way to display the game and the progress, get several hits, don't get too excited if your game goes up quickly the rankings after posting some pics or stuff, don't get depressed if it goes down quickly after, it happens all the time.
Pros : Quite nicely structured, quick to manage, several hits
Cons : Needs moderation for each blog post before it's published, almost no feedback at all from users
Klout
https://klout.com
Summary : Keep track of your online influencing factor, schedule posts and tweets and manage stuff, very useful tool. Integrate the plugin for twitter to keep an eye on how you're doing there.
Pros : Optimal tool, management and measurements very well made.
Cons : Not many to be honest.
https://twitter.com/EiR_TD
Summary : Probably the fastest way to increase your reach, using the #indiedev and #gamedev hashtags you can spread quite a lot. Find the right balance between tweeting quality and re-tweet enough times to be seen but not being a spammer. Don't forget to use the #screenshotsaturday hashtag on saturdays to have a boost of tweets.
Pros : Lots of feedback, reach grows decently fast
Cons : Don't get illusion if you get retweeted a lot from bots, the tweets flow is so large that lots of them get just lost on people's walls without being seen.
https://www.facebook.com/EmpiresInRuins
Summary : Painfully slow in the growth, people are probably afraid that if they like your page you'll be spamming their walls. Also is a bit more personal than twitter, so several don't wanna mix personal life and games, I don't know. But if it grows slowly, don't worry it's normal. (you can always pay to get fake likes from FB, but i find that a bit lame, though might be useful so people get to a page with more likes)
Pros : Use the following groups to spread, you will get quite some feedback, but don't expect many people to like your page even after liking the stuff you share. Compared to twitter a page allows you to put many more details and material.
Cons :Super slow in growing.
Good groups to join :
Indie Game Developers
https://www.facebook.com/groups/8117041572/
Indie Game Promo
https://www.facebook.com/groups/227592780726252/
Video Game Developers
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2248433342/
GameDev.net
https://www.gamedev.net/
Summary : Well, you are reading this so you know how to get here. I think the most useful feature is the developer journal. Don't expect tons of feedback, but much more than indieDB still. If you publish interesting dev logs you might get some useful one once in a while.
Pros :
Cons :
Indie Game Mag
http://indiegamemag.com/tag/screenshot-weekly/
Summary : One of the first steps here is to get once in the screenshot weekly section, later you can go for ads and try to get a short article there. Contact Vinny, the guy in charge of screenshot weekly, and send him 4 screenshots of you game and a little text. Not huge exposure but quite nice anyway.
Pros : Nice exposure, quick to manage, looks profi when you share the link
Cons : Not much to say about cons
http://www.reddit.com/r/indiegames/
http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedevscreens
Summary : Links links links. Quick to post, get some stuff up there for additional exposure.
Pros : Quick to manage, decent exposure.
Cons : Can only publish limited amounts of stuff, if you miss the captcha or have to cancel a post and redo it, you always have to wait 10 minutes at least, a bit annoying sometimes.
ThunderClap
https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/20035-empires-in-ruins
Summary : A social crowdfunding thing, basically get enough support before a certain date and a message will be flashed on the walls of all the supporters if you get to the threshold.
Pros : Good exposure, nice tool to warm up the ground before a crowdfunding campaign.
Cons : People are afraid of spam maybe? Not to easy to get support there. The free version is pretty limited in the options on how to build the page and spread, but the payment version start to be only useful if you pay at least 100 dollars per campaign, the 45 dollars one is sorta useless.
https://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=4433494
Summary : This group is possibly the place where we got the most professional advice in several matters. Lots of experienced and helpful people there, willing to help.
Pros : Professional, helpful and useful.
Cons : More to get advice from fellow gamedev than to reach out for potential customers though.
