How do you promote your clan to new members?

[Fohlen]

Hey guys. Just wondering ... how do you usually promote your clan if you're looking for new members?
Do you use any certain criteria to "find" new folks (beside the usual cheats n stuff)?
Any place to look at?
Let me know what you think about this and how you're organizing such stuff for your own clans usually..

[Fear]

We dont need any promotion!

Fell free to apply at vaq-clan.de.

[pix]

I'd only start a clan with at least 2 other players I play a lot with, and just keep playing with them as before. When someone gets along well with all of you, it might be a good idea to invite him at some point / let him join when he asks to.

Clans that go looking for members don't work well in my experience: Firstly, it makes you look desperate to "hunt members" and secondly the relationship between the clan as a whole and the individual player isn't balanced. The clan really depends on the player but the player often is like "meh... they're nice but I don't give a shit if I play with AB tag or XY...". The best way to avoid this is to let players apply when they want to and to then make sure they really want to be part of the group.
An even stricter approach is the "invite-only" method where players are asked to apply only when the group thinks they could be good fit.

TL;DR: Don't start a clan on your own. Grow organically.

[greenadiss]

Clans usually promote themselves by playing clan wars, being active and communicating with people. It usually works naturally.
People don't notice clans which are not active and usually want to join the most active clans.

By just asking people to join your clan, you actually achieve only more members who are not part of the clan, just for quantity.

The best way is to be active and to ask people you often play with to join your IRC channel, that's how they can get closer to your clan and be better known to the members.

New clans also should happen naturally. The reason to create a new clan should be creating a team of people you enjoy to play with. Not just, "Oh, I can create a clan, so let's find people by asking them to join it".

That's my opinion.

[star]

I think in the case of DK where most members are inactive, it's not possible to promote via clan wars...
in this case i'd suggest promotion could be done via recruiting via game servers. just be around and check on new talented players.
another option would be to make a post about recruiting clans on sauercom!

[Fohlen]

Hey, firstly thank's for all the nice feedback!
Yes, I definitely agree with greenadiss and p|x.
In case of DK we do have a very strict invite-only policy so it's rough hard for us to find people 
Anyways this kind of system (more or less) promises you to gain a strong clan where people support each other because they know everyone quiet well .. so it's a nice thing to have!

[Suicizer]

The best way is to be active as clan in any aspect; just be around servers, IRC channels but also in organising competitions. The formula is simple. The more active the members of a clan is in the community, the more people want to join.
After that, there's always the trap of a clan getting more and more inactive after a while. You could tackle this by start questioning what kind of objective your clan has, should there be a limit to the amount of members, etc right on the beginning of the clan. If you want a clan which contains more skilled and talented players, it's quite harder than when having a clan that's participating the game just for fun no matter what (friendship comes first here).
A clan with the combination of mapping and fragging often leads to dividing the clan into 2 different sections or even clans eventually as some people rather map than playing the game after a certain time while newcomers of the clan perhaps rather stick around to frag.