Hello, friends! Today marks my second anniversary as Emissary of the Brotherhood. If I were Arch, it would also be the day I resigned from the position. I'm not Arch, though, so you're all stuck with me a while longer.

2025 was the source of a lot of ups and downs for the Emissary Staff, not least including Bubba's resignation. Atra's nomination and confirmation process, particularly questions from the members about recruitment and engagement, have shown that there's still a lot of work to be done.

Recruitment

The short answer to what the club is doing about recruitment is the same as when I first came on as Emissary: website traffic and social media.

We're deliberately not focusing on direct, one-to-one recruitment to expand our member base. Why? Because those efforts only go as far as our existing members' social networks. Thanks to paid advertising and AI slop, the days where you could throw a post about the club into a Facebook group and get half a dozen nibbles are gone.

What we're doing instead is using the same strategy that companies use for digital marketing. The details of that would take a much longer post to explain, but the simple answer is that we're trying to make Google's and social media algorithms work in our favour. By doing that, we have access to thousands or even millions of potential members, instead of the dozens or hundreds we could reach through one-to-one recruiting.

Unfortunately, playing the algorithm is hard and takes time. We're doing our best to restart our social media posting after technical difficulties and the holiday season got the better of us in December. If you'd like to help, follow our BlueSky and Instagram accounts, and like or share the posts you see.

Engagement and Retention

The biggest concern I've seen come up on the engagement front is that for members who are just getting into a new activity, it's hard to break into existing social groups.

This is kind of a tricky topic, because as Emissary, I can't just wave my hand and provide on-demand activities for everyone—although I certainly wish I could! It takes a willingness to buy in from the people who are already active, too.

With that in mind, I'd like to ask everyone—both those in the social groups and those outside them—to stretch a little outside their comfort zone. The beta of the new website lists open public RPs and gaming matchmaking groups on Discord. If you're organising an activity and have spots open, please make sure you've either used /party create for gaming or /rp advertise for RP.

If you're looking for something to do, try putting one of those groups up yourself and seeing if anyone joins in. It might take a few tries if you're outside the club's most popular time zones and activities, but there's always the chance that someone sees your party and decides to join in.

Closing Out

Recruitment and engagement have been bugbears for virtually as long as the club has been around, and certainly since the end of the 2000s glut of Star Wars-based video games. However, you can all rest assured that my commitment to bringing more people into our wonderful community is as strong as ever.

If you have any suggestions for new ways to approach recruiting and engagement, don't hesitate to contact us via the links below.

Links

• Brotherhood Leadership Feedback Form: Click Here
• Emissary Staff Google Group: [Log in to view e-mail addresses]

• Emissary Staff Suggestion Box: Click Here

• Bluesky: DJB Official Bluesky

• Instagram: DJB Official Instagram

• X/Twitter: DJB Official X/Twitter