The general focus at this point is "Forum Owners & Forum Admins", which is cool and all since there's so many forums out there on the inter-webs. However, I think that there's a HUGE market share being missed by only focusing on forums. There's several different types of Admin.'s and most aren't forum related. For example: 1.) Forum Admin 2.) Systems Admin 3.) Tech Admin 4.) Account Admin 5.) Monitor Admin 6.) Security Admin 7.) Archive Admin 8.) Policy Admin 9.) Social media Page Admin 10.) Administrative Assistant 11.) Administrative Coordinator 12.) Administrative Services Manager 13.) Administrative Support Manager 14.) Assistant Director 15.) Contract Admin 16.) Administrative Analyst 17.) Special Events Admin .......... And MORE!!!! In Conclusion: I think that if Admin-Talk was to expand to start covering all the different fields of administration, it may open up the door to a more authoritative platform for professionals in all administrative industries to collaborate with one another. Just an idea anyways, It may be a huge task and transformation to try and tackle all at once. However, it's definitely an option for expansion. Eric Lyon
I agree with this it could get it really popular if so, many more types of admins would flood in to start posting about there experiences i wouldn't use this since i am just a general webmaster.
I think even general webmaster Admins can benefit from other Administrative experiences in different industries. At the end of the day, many administrative tasks mirror each other, such as but not limited to: Hiring/Firing, Employee performance reviews, Data analysis, Marketing campaigns, Motivational programs, Incentive programs, Joint ventures, Payroll, Structure, Paper flow, Employee management, Team management, Time management, Profit analysis, Customer service, Etc..... and much, much more. Having a coop of administrators in various industries could prove to open the door to ideas some may have never considered otherwise that benefit the growth of ones own company / community. Even as webmaster Admins, one should still strive for the same professionalism as all other industry Admins. Eric Lyon
Yeh Admin Talk seems to be all about Forums, but may be you should open up to all the major scripts out there. Think of all the extra people you'll get in here. I would just start with things like WordPress, Joomla, Ecommerce, the well known site scripts.
Sorry, but I feel that what is being suggested could actually be damaging to this community. IMO the success of this forum is that it brings together people who are interested in forums. By broadening the subject matter, AT could become less helpful, less friendly and less "community" for the core members who are forum owners. In the past I have generally tried to make my forums really broad in nature, trying to capture as large a market as possible. In hindsight, I feel that my forums would have been more successful if I had kept them focused on a more specific niche and worked really hard at being the best site / community in that niche. Obviously the above is just my opinion and I'm conscious of the fact that Eric is admin on a larger and more successful forum than I've owned.
@Fergal ::: You're talking micro-niche focusing, which in itself is a good policy for the highest conversion rates. I agree with that aspect of micro-niching. There's an off-set though to that when it comes to a community forum and why we see some of the bigger forums having so many additional categories. Many have a marketplace + primary niche topic + webmaster + off-topic. Then you have the ones that hit a Primary niche and start adding sub-niches within the primary to cover all bases within the same primary niche (That's how NamePros is structured for the most part). It allows our primary niche of Domains to then branch into micro-niches of different tld's and then touch related niches that complement the primary niche and domainers such as design, development, webmaster, business, search engines, monetizing, etc.. In this case though with Admin-Talk, Administration is the primary niche being debated and all the different types of admins are the micro-niches and related complimentary niches. While specializing in a micro-niche is great, it's also very limiting and contains some blind sides. By blind sides I refer to tasks that some webmaster admins should be doing, but they aren't because they never related such tasks to a forum admin setting. However, once we start to combine and train our self in a broader range of administrative tasks and duties (In a primary niche) we start to find that they greatly increase the productivity of our business models (community forums). Naturally, some administrative tasks won't be compatible with all administrative industry types. However, you might be surprised just how many tasks are cross platform-able and can greatly increase our forum communities bottom line and growth, stability, revenue, management, marketing outreach, brand recognition, etc.. Just my added thoughts anyways, Eric Lyon
Added Note: Keep in mind that a Community Forum can have multiple admins assigned to different Departments.. E.G.: Operations Admin., Tech. Admin, Customer Support Admin., HR Admin., Assistant Admin., Marketing / Advertising Admin., etc... While some of us try to take on all the different types of admin. rolls our self and combine it into 1 admin. title, Most companies separate the roles so that each has more focus on the tasks that department needs to flourish. Scattering our self (spreading thin) to try and cover 5 / 10 / 20 / 50 different things can be very hard and definitely effects our % of time investment in each task. One thing that we can learn from multiple types of admins. is a better way to structure such tasks and assign assistant admins to some of the departments until we grow a bit more and can justify having head admins in each depart. + an assistant for them. (Assistant admins in the forum world may be refereed to as Super Mods or Team leaders, or Section Leaders, or Member Services, or a number of other titles that identify them to a specific department within the community / business.) There's hundreds of reasons why collaborating with different types of admins can assist everyone. The above is just one of them. Eric Lyon
I wouldn't delute the topic of "administration" too much. That could get quite out of hand. But yes, extending the topics to certain kinds of web based administration activity on an application and/ or system level, could be interesting. Scott
It would not hurt to add sections for other web applications including social media, CMS, Chat, E-Commerce, Galleries, Wikis, Downloads, etc.
Well, I dunno. It would depend how overshadowing the newcomers were to be, and if they would be welcomed. If the site grows, then there's more people to share their experiences and to show people how to do things. It will result in more learning, and allow people to learn more new stuff. It could be bad however, and that's where you have to be careful - the site might become overwhelmed. Liam
Omg that made my Laugh so much! Maybe we can get some of the Admins in from the porn sites and set us up with some free subscriptions to their money sites ;-)
I would definitely like to see some more sections on some other web based applications instead of just forums. I think that can add some value to this site. But in the end I just have to agree and say that the real value would be here:
That's a good idea. By expanding the admin types that AdminTalk supports, AdminTalk may be able to pull ahead of the competition, until other forums start stealing the idea.
Yeah, but then the minimum age would be increased, and everything else would be bad... Oh wait, your were joking... (I hope).