ATTENTION FOREIGN AMBASSADORS: Input Requested!

[Jesioneka]

Hello! To all foreign ambassadors -- new and old -- welcome to the 10000 Islands! We thank you for establishing an embassy here and hope to remain in friendly relations with your region. Now on to the business...

I would like to use this thread to engage you in a discussion on various topics of concern to both us and you. This way, we can better all of our regions and improve the quality of play throughout the NS world.

The first topic is immigration. If you would, please sum up how your home governments go about recruiting and keeping nations. As you know, our population has dropped here recently so we are welcoming any new ideas and looking to other regions for guidance.

This is just a very important topic for the 10KI meant to kick off discussion. In the future, of course, we will help you if you have questions about how we run some of our unique, better programs. (For example, establishing a currency.) This is meant to be an exchange of ideas between regions.

I look forward to your input and engaging you on a number of topics in the months to come!

Jesioneka
Head of the Emissary Program

[Sinn Féin's Ireland]

I Know im not an ambassador, but i want to set up two government subsidised competing private IMM businesses.
The subsidies are so that the workers can be paid a large and healthy wage, and that the company who successfully recruits the most new nations to the region and forum will get the monthly government grant. It will also be backed by big corporate moguls like yours truely who will have many shares in both company. Thus stimulating involvement, economic growth, etc. We could have sponsorship too...

Also, Mercenary scab labour from other regions, paying them a lot of to recruit for our region. I also would suggest the rewards for the government IMM dept.

Also, defending. We simply need lots of pan global traffic to and from 10KI. I remember when i was just a wee lad back in '04 i would click on the more frequented region links via the pacific boards. Thats how i came to hear of this place to start with.

Just some thoughts.


Sinn.

[Equalist Communist]

Sorry it took me a while to get here. In Equilism we've also been recovering from a drop in our population. Our main way to get our numbers back has been to send out a lot of people to spread TGs around the feeders inviting nations to join Equilism. The stategy has been successful on an on and off basis. When they finally get to the region we highly encourage them to join our forum and if they do we try to make sure we contact each new member individually and welcome them to show that we are nice people and don't bite. It may not sound like the most fancy system but it's been working for us lately.

[Jesioneka]

Thanks for the response! Actually, that's almost identical to what we do here, but it's good to know we're not too far off. We just need to get some more active recruiters I think. But again, thanks for the insight.

[Imperfectia]

Yeah, I have to say that what Equilism does, we do in Aberdeen. We try to make it a little more organized though than just sending out nations to recruit...

When I headed up recruitment I would make sure that we had all the feeder regions assigned to a nation responsible for recruiting in thier desingated feeder region for a certian time amount (say from 6-9pm - or something like that) Now they didn't have to recruit that entire time, but it was thier time to recruit. We try to stagger that over different time zones so that someone is recruiting in GMT during those hours and then another nation is recruiting in EST in thhose same regions...

The other thing I found out is that a region has to have a pretty distinctive TG if it is giong to attract nations. Make sure you stress what your region is known for and whats great about 10KI. For Aberdeen i mentioned that "we are a region that likes to RP, especially the governmental aspects of our nations..." That seemed to work - we have definatley seen an increase in those members who participate in RPing...

One final thing, but it is time consuming as all get out, is to personalize each of the recruitment TGs, if only a little bit. I had a couple nations comment that what made our TG stand out was that we noticed somthing about their nation individually and that it didn't FEEL like a form recruitment TG...

I don't know - its tough. Especially when there are new regions popping up everyday also starting to send out TGs to recruit... *shrug*
Hope those suggestions help at least a little.

[Jesioneka]

They certainly do help and we appreciate it!

We do very similar things here, actually. Our telegrams emphasize some of our region's unique features -- things that give us our NS "identity." I think as far as personalizing goes, we sometimes try to use the nation's name. I think that might be all we do, though, so there's something to work on a bit.

Your time zone strategy is excellent! I've never worked in immigration myself, but as of late, I'm pretty sure our recruiters just do recruiting whenever they have free time. Instead of having a block of time set aside for each recruiter, we have the one active recruiter change their forum name, putting an *r* beside it. This way, there's no duplication or no two people out working simultaneously. But I've got to say -- breaking it up by time zone does make quite a lot of sense, to me at least. Hopefully, our immigration experts are listening -- if not, I'll run it by one of them.

Once again, thank you. And if you have any questions about how we do things too, fire away here.

[Objectivizt Chimps]

Well, I'm a bit late here, so I have no idea if this is still pertinent or needed...

I originate from the region Galts Gulch, which at one point grew faster than I believe any region has ever been known to grown in the game (about 300-400% growth in a few months, reaching our maximum height at around 500 or so?).

Our strategy was simple... first, we had two ridiculous guys who would recruit every nation in all the feeders over the course of one weekend. Two, we had a very specific package to sell. We were looking for capitalists or anyone similar to that, and that's about it. It meant that we had a very distinct "product" to offer which gave nations a very good incentive.

Emphasizing your uniqueness is crucial, but as is having a specific thing to sell to the nation you're recuiting.

[Jesioneka]

Your input is definitely both pertinent and needed. Thank you for it.

Galts Gulch's strategy seems to have all the characteristics of what has been successful for immigration recruiters throughout NS. That is, 1) a unique product and 2) a small number of extremely dedicated individuals. Your observations reconfirm this, and I will pass the information on to my superiors as we cope with our immigration struggles. Thanks again!

[The Great Commonwealth]

In Alpha Omega we hire Immigration Assistants. We then set each a sort of quota of nations to telegram for each Assistant or each week. As for the telegram itself you have to point out why you are a bit different from everybody else. Also I try and add a personal message at the bottom, commenting on the nations motto or flag.

[Milla - Embassy of Italia]

uhm, a little late, but...
in italia, as you may imagine, we just have italian speaking nations. so for us it is quite easy to recruit people that prefer to speak in their own language in feeder regions or in small regions with 5/6 nations. recently a small region italian speaking called "lucca" has decided to disband and join us. that's the nice thing on speaking a bizarre language