This is going to be a little list of things not to do and to do.
1. Do not randomly blind invite. Blind inviting is just sending an invite out of the blue. Talk to the person first.
2. Do not use a copy/paste macro when recruiting. We can tell. Talk to the person as a person.
3. If you talk to the person and they say no, they may remember you if it was good. They may say yes later. So don't:
-get mad at them for not accepting
-offer to bribe them to join.
-badger them to join
4. If you talk to the person, and it goes ok, even if rejected, for the love of God remember them. Do not keep sending them the same copy and pasted macro each time you come across them. Just talk to them as people (see the common thread?)
5. Realize that not everyone wants to be an officer. Try and find out what they do want from an fc. Make sure its soemthing beneficial, not many people want to join an fc just to make levekits for everyone, or be errand boy for you.
6. Be careful of what your members do. If your members like to troll the local annoying guy in Limsa for the lulz, realize a lot of people are watching them do that, and they may not like trolls, and they will remember the FC.
7. Lastly, make sure your fc meets its existing people's needs. Make sure you are not all on discord, that your members are ok, you are doing content, etc. Recuiting people who are considering your fc only to watch it implode and split, and then the following fc split, can sour them on the idea itself. Watching them go through three or more changes of leadership because the leaders keep dropping out of the game...not good. The best advertisement is a group of people having fun.
This game is tough because guilds are such a weak presence in it. You don't rely on them to do any endgame at all, its all the relationships. So you don't have the leeway other games have, where a lot of people feel forced into it just to run raids.