Promotion Strategies...

I am just curious what your promotion strategies for this site are currently.

I don't see any social networking itegration or referrer information in the user profile. The most cost effective method of advertising a forum is through viral word of mouth and this site isn't taking advantage of that. Even the register link is hidden in a sub-section of the site. When you visit the directory, it shows additional tabs of Tutorials, Demos, and Themes. Two of which of those lead to a 404 error.

Your 404 page should have a site map on it with links to your main sections and individual information pages. Registering should be accessible and advertises on every page. Users should be encouraged to Email, Digg, Tweet, Facebook, and Buzz Up your articles and threads. Those are just to big ones, there are many others. As an example of how effective this advertising can be... If I can advertise an article in a simple click, that is advertising to 78 people on Twitter and another 25 on Facebook. With a single click. My friends and follow lists aren't large but they are focused plus they are growing as I network. What happens when someone with a couple thousand followers tweets your posts? And has it bouncing every where on the Internet?

People discount the social networking as a fad and something for teens but it has been available offline for as long as mankind has conducted business. It won't take long for the online version to catch up. 400 million bloggers around the world, 200 million people on Facebook, 10 million on Twitter. It really adds up over time.

80% of the site membership has 5 posts or less on this site. Probably 75% have 0 posts. The site has potential and that should be exploited.

 

Thank you for your extensive input, Wayne. It is greatly appreciated.

I've come to realize that reviving this project will take extreme effort and time (which I certainly am willing to invest) but I just don't have my work cut out for me. There is a lot to be done in order to maximize the site's potential and I'm really the only one with a desire to work for it here.

Thanks to your input, my next task is to implement various ways to exploit the site's content: integrating Tweeting, Digging, Stumbling ability, etc. Other than the default Social Bookmarking feature in vBulletin, do you have any specific modification recommendations?

Thanks again.

 

Well you can use the built-in social bookmarking. Personally, I don't like the layout but that is handled by templates. There is an addon called vBTwitter at vb.org that allows people to tweet to their accounts right from the threads. AS someone who doesn't actually visit the Twitter website and use clients to update my status that would be nice. Especially since every tweet that I make gets duplicated to Facebook and my blog at the same time.

 

My main promotion technique is video blogging.

I'll make a video, upload it to youtube and give it a certain title. I then use a service offered by tubemogul to push my videos out to 9 more video sites. The title of that video is different then the one on youtube. That way the different videos show up in different searches in google.

If I had a faster high speed connection, and did not have a 10gig a month limit, I would upload each video manually and give each one a different title and description. But I just do not have the time to do that.

Some of the sites I post on are youtube, yahoo video, break, metacafe, dailymotion, veoh, vimeo,,,,

Youtube is my number 2 source of targeted traffic with only an 18% bounce rate.

My other form of promotion is my blog. Which I will post the videos on, and post links back to the forum. The traffic my blog sends my form has an 8% bounce rate.

 

Wayne, I've addressed a handful of issues this morning.

1) A registration button has been placed below the navbar on all pages, for guests. It has also been added to the top of the first column on the blog.

2) The links that were displayed when viewing the directory have been removed.

3) The 404 Error page has been changed to include links to the Blog, Directory, Forum and all forum sections.

My next task is to work on the Social Networking integration. I've checked out vBTwitter, but it requires mcrypt. That isn't installed on this server, and I have no idea how to install it, to be quite honest.

Do you have any personal recommendations for social integration modifications that will bring Digg, Buzz, Delicious, etc. integration into posts and/or threads?

What do you think about integrating Facebook Connect? Is that a good idea? I'd be glad to do this.

I really appreciate and admire your advice and the mere fact that you're even willing to take the time and make suggestions for the site. I totally understand your whole concept of broadcasting to a wide audience using the SN tools available. I just can't figure out what the best way to integrate them is.

 

Thanks, Kevin.

I can't seem to find any, but is there a modification that can implement such integration into each post? (Other than vBSEO)
Wayne, do you think this is even a good idea? Or should it be for threads only?

 

New Twitter Integration

I have also implemented Twitter integration into each post. You simply need to head to your UserCP Options and choose 'Yes' for "Do you use Twitter?" (this option is in the Thread Display Options section). Choosing 'Yes' will cause the TweetMe button to appear inside each post.

 

That's weird that you are taken to a blank page. I'll have to look into it.

The code was provided by somebody on the vBulletin support forums. Here it is if you're interested:

Code:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"></script>

 

Okay, I've removed the TweetMe button. It's causing too many issues. I wish I could figure out how to get MCrypt installed on the server so I can use vBTWitter.

At any rate, I think I'm going to stick with just the Addthis button.

 

Thanks! Mind sharing a link to the other site?

I'm totally new to SSH access. This site is on a separate server than all of my other sites, and is the only one with SSH.

Is it possible that I screw anything up by using this pasted code?

I sound totally ignorant. But thanks for your help.

 

Okay. Do I run all of this at once? Or each segment at a time?

 

To help promote Let's Just Talk, I promote at various advertising forums and take advantage of their services. My favorite services include post exchanges (you do five on my forum I do five on yours; you remain active on mine and I'll remain active on yours) also I like to request post packages as well. These are both great ways to boost a forums activity!