Promoting Your RUST Server

Promoting your RUST server (that you may have found using my other guide on choosing a RUST server hosting provider) can be difficult if you’re unsure how and where to start. In the past I have used various ways to promote my servers. I have compiled a list of 3 steps to promote your rust server based on my own personal experience.

Table of Contents

1. Creating Promotional Material

Creating promotional material is the first step towards success. You need to have plenty of relevant content.

Videos

Videos are a fantastic way to show off your server on social media and websites. It’s much easier to show a player why to join your server.

As gamer’s we are very visual creatures. Use platforms like Vimeo and YouTube to host your video.

Screen Shots

Take plenty of interesting screenshots of your server. Screenshot raids, buildings, party members fighting. Anything that shows off your server in a positive and fun way. The more creative you are with the imagery the more likely you are to draw in new players.

Ask your current members to help out with this process. You could give away a prize for the best daily upload. It’s an easy free way to build up content and show off your server.

Custom Images

If you’re creative and know how to edit images on Gimp, Photoshop etc. You should start creating your own branding for your server. Make a logo, create server banners and edited photos that will make your server look more professional.

As a player looking for a server, I always join well developed and highly active servers that look like they are professionally run. If you put no effort into promoting and visually making your server look nice. You will just blend in to the other thousands of servers that come and go on a daily basis. It takes time to build up a lot of content and create promotional material but it’s all worth while and will help you with the next step on my list.

2. Create a website or ENJIN Clan Page

Creating a website or Enjin page is a fantastic way to help promote your server. With a website you can easily link new players to your server and show them what your community has to offer.

If you’re unable to create your own website I would suggest using Enjin as it has a free option to get you started.

Enjin

Enjin is a fantastic place to build a clan website and already boasts that it has over 300,000 community related site pages. With more than 18.5 million registered users. It’s the social media platform for gamer’s and tech nerds. It’s more widely known in the gaming community for it’s free website builder.

The website builder is fantastic for players looking to promote their server but don’t have the skills to build their own website.

Enjin offers 3 varied packages:

Free – $0 Per month Forever
Advanced – $8.99 Per Month
Ultimate – $29.99 Per Month

The free service is a great way to get started and offers many good quality features that will allow you to run a pretty successful clan website.

Top features on the free package include:

Sync Server

You can easily sync your main game server to your clan page with this great feature. It allows the community to link to your server easily, making the game more accessible.

Player Profiles

Everyone has a profile when they sign up to Enjin so it’s easier to manage all your players on your server. It’s a great place to build a community and keep your players active.

Forum Board

A built-in forum board allows you and your players to community outside of the game.

This is a great space to create events and build community topics.

Online Store

The store feature is useful when you build up your community as it gives you a chance to make money out of your server. You can sell extra features, server items and clan ranks.

These are just a couple reasons to create a clan page on Enjin. If you find that you enjoy the free version of Enjin it is definitely worth upgrading your membership. Promoting your server takes some serious work, but can reap many rewards if you’re willing to put in the effort. The most popular servers I have played on always have their own website or Enjin page.

Paid Plans

For an idea of the cost of Enjin, check out their current pricing plans:

3. Use Free Server Lists

Promoting your server on a server list can be difficult if you’re not willing to pay for the premium account. Hundreds of servers are activated daily and added to all the overpopulated listing sites. It can be very difficult to promote your server this way unless you’re willing to do a bit of work to make your server stand out.

Here are a few suggestions to make your server listing stand out:

Choose and interesting name
Make and eye catching banner
Use unique Graphics
Use stop motion
Add tags to your server

I always find that I’m drawn to the server listings that have moving images. It requires a bit of skill to make this type of banner. However I always notice that animated banners have the ability to contain a lot more information than static banners.

If you create a animated banner then you should include:

The Server Name
Server IP
Mods and Plugins
Playing Schedule
Server Location
Community Website or group
PVP or PVE
Wipes
Loot
Free Kits
Clans
Additional Features

Try to make your server listing as unique as possible. If you have the time, check on your server listing daily and see how you can make changes on a daily basis to improve your ranking over time.

Get players to up vote your server

If you already have friends that play on your server (which you may have found on my best RUST server hosting list on the home page), ask them to up vote your listing on the server pages. Up voting is one of the main factors when it comes to ranking on a listing site. The more up votes and positive feedback you have the higher your position. Try to vote daily to improve your rank.

Suggested Server listings:

Conclusion

Promoting your server is one of the most important aspects of owning a server. These are just my top suggestions for getting started. Once you have some promotional material and a website you can easily start posting these videos, links and images on other platforms such as:

Remember the more work you put in, the more players you can potentially get.