Call to arms: Marketing Community MOC's

[roamingstop]

As many people are discussing, the issue of fandom / licensed based sets getting high votes on Cuusoo (and other places) at the expense of excellent, creative (non-licensed) MOC's is jarring some nerves. If you delve through Cuusoo pages, towards the back (after page 28 onwards) are some great MOC's which are highly creative (I will list answers later) which dont get 'discovered'. On their official Blog, I asked why the Discover function does not dig backwards and highlight some excellent, but older projects. The effective reply was that TLG expected project owners to self promote their own projects. And who can blame them? (especially when looking at Winchester).

However, I suspect many people are not able to generate the hype which a licensed set can manage, and excellent MOC's like the Western Modular Project get over-exposed as people try to drive up the requests via various blog posts etc. There are other suggestions like lowering the entry bar for Cuusoo - but im not sure this will happen... especially since once uploaded TLG get access to your creativity... and it may not be a Cuusoo project but it might spark their marketing department elsewhere...

The biggest quality about Cuusoo is likely to be free marketing demographics which comes with it; spotting trends; who votes for which types of sets (licensed only? creative MOC only?) etc. However this does not help the average user get good exposure for their MOC; which they may consider excellent, but the Discover function will never find because it is picking only 'High Votes', 'High Comments'.

So the idea for this thread and some questions... (and please, dont post I want my MOC to get votes here). First some questions:

* How can you help maximise exposure to MOC's without bombing forums? (I for one generally dont read 'vote for my cool MOC'; and there are now forum rules for this... good).

* How can you generate exposure for older MOC's without being partisan? Who judges the MOC quality?

* Should <website X> have a widget to randomly pick a model of the day? Once again, who judges the MOC quality?

* Outside of Lego-DOM - should MOC's get posted onto generic fan websites? E.g. The Vampire GT model getting exposure via Auto-trader? If so - how?

* If a MOC from a community member should achieve 200 votes, does it get a higher level of exposure: E.g. EB Member X submitted this great MOC, and now we would like to help push it higher.

Im sure I dont know all the answers; and welcome thoughts and comments.

[mrklaw]

First, I'd be tempted to split out original and licensed into two separate streams on cuusoo, so that original MOCs get more focus.

Second, I'd recommend not fussing too much. It's early days and I expect things will settle down over time and good MOCs will bubble up.

Thirdly, and perhaps slightly provocatively, what is the prime driver here? Being able to self-promote is an important part of the mix on cuusoo. The nature of the beast is that you can't just rely on havi a great model then sit back and wait for the votes to come it. You have to spread the word. Not just on Lego sites, but enthusiast sites for the theme you are developing. Maybe see if you can physically display your model at a relevant show.

Licensed products will generally be easier to promote, as you can try to get actors etc retweeting about your model. But all facets of life have active fanbases, you just have to dig a little more for some of them.