Ideas on attracting new visitors

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admin

Retired Administrator
Has anyone got any bright ideas on attracting new visitors or encourage people who don't speak to speak...

Also if you have a website and would like to add a link for us, please do! :D

We have tried to make ourselves more visitors friendly in the past few months and our efforts have shown a signficant improvement. We have added welcome messages and reminders to guests and encouraged non posters to post, but being a greedy forum we need more input and contributions, if you have any ideas how to imporove such things, no matter how wacky suggest them here, from a 100 hour chatroom session marathon, or something else!
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
Yeah! You could enroll in Adwords!

And have the marathon! And tell people about how great people like me are! :)
 

Emrysgirl

New member
I don't have any good ideas, so here are some lame ones:):

On getting new members:
I don't know where the site is being promoted right now. But maybe advertise not just on MitM pages, but also on the pages for simmilar or related shows. Maybe shows like The War at Home, The Simpsons, AD or Scrubs.

On gettng them to post:
Perhaps make a sticky for general/easy questions. This would encourage members who are too intimidated to ask Qs and also take care of a lot of short threads such as the episode identification ones.
 

Dewey

Minimalistic
Another one would be to convince Linwood Boomer or Todd Holland to put your URL on the end credits of every episode from now on. Not sure how feasible that would be :)
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
Well it probably wouldn't help to convince Linwood, considering he's not technically affiliated anymore. :)
 
These ideas wouldnt necessarily get people who dont talk to talk. You could only give visitors a certian amount of access, then state they need to be a member- this may have the opposite effect though.:D You could also try to blag free merchandise (you do promote the programme absolutley LOADS to run competitions
 

Ryebeach

Moderator
I'm not terribly fond of this idea but you could always state when members sign up they have to post within so many days or else their membership will be deleted and current members have to post at least every so many days (60 or 90) or their membership will be deleted. This seems to be happening on a lot of message boards nowadays but I have mixed feelings about it. Just a thought.
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
In my opinion, that could delete valued members who are simply on hiatus (like tjpeople). On the other hand, it may be more tidying up than anything, because there are probably a lot of members who don't even remember they registered. What are the pros and cons in your eyes?
 

admin

Retired Administrator
These are certainly ideas, and the fourms do have a "prune" inactive and low posting members, but as you say yg, people will sometimes not post for a long period, perhaps because they are busy or because there is simply nothing to talk about, ie the forums going stale. Also deleting low posting members will badly effect those who have recently signed up!

I would prefer to take positive actions against those who do post rather than negative action against those who don't - I don't mind "lurkers" but they must all realise that if it wernt for active members they would have nothing to read
 

Ryebeach

Moderator
yardgames said:
In my opinion, that could delete valued members who are simply on hiatus (like tjpeople). On the other hand, it may be more tidying up than anything, because there are probably a lot of members who don't even remember they registered. What are the pros and cons in your eyes?

That's an excellent point yardgames and a major reason why I'm not for this idea. I signed up here in January, posted a bit and then didn't post again for a few months afterwards due to my schedule and I probably would have been upset if I returned and found my membership deleted.

admin said:
These are certainly ideas, and the fourms do have a "prune" inactive and low posting members, but as you say yg, people will sometimes not post for a long period, perhaps because they are busy or because there is simply nothing to talk about, ie the forums going stale. Also deleting low posting members will badly effect those who have recently signed up!

I would prefer to take positive actions against those who do post rather than negative action against those who don't - I don't mind "lurkers" but they must all realise that if it wernt for active members they would have nothing to read
I agree with you admin. Okay, here's my idea. I think a good thing to do is a Member of the Week. I'm doing it on other boards now and it is extremely popular. It's a positive way to showcase a member each week who has contributed greatly to the forums. The member of the week would be chosen by the staff and they would receive a customized banner with their username on it and they could display it in their sig for the week they are nominated. An announcement could be posted in the Grotto and congrats could be given to the member there. Some newbies or folks who don't post too often may be tempted to after seeing it. It's a good way to keep up with the positive atmosphere here. I know you have the awards which are great but this would be something weekly to generate interest and posting, in my opinion. Just another thought. :D
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
I'm glad you're still here. You offer interesting insight from a person of advanced years. (sorry if that came out wrong.)

Member of the Week is an interesting idea; maybe we need more than Member of the Quarter-Year (which is coming up again, pretty soon, David, and I might remind you that I'm eligible this time around :))

Rye, what other boards do you run? You're quite the forums-person! :)
 

admin

Retired Administrator
Its certainly an idea, it was my first thought when I was making awards but at the time we had about 5 active members and after 5 weeks everyone would have one! So I made it a year, and then per quarter.

We could try out the member of the week thing, I am not sure how it would run though... would it be decided via simple nominations or reputation or what...
 

Ryebeach

Moderator
yardgames said:
I'm glad you're still here. You offer interesting insight from a person of advanced years. (sorry if that came out wrong.)
Thanks Sam :)

admin said:
Its certainly an idea, it was my first thought when I was making awards but at the time we had about 5 active members and after 5 weeks everyone would have one! So I made it a year, and then per quarter.

We could try out the member of the week thing, I am not sure how it would run though... would it be decided via simple nominations or reputation or what...
David, I'll send you a PM. :)
 

tjpeople

Site Administrator
Staff member
Good idea to attract members, but i dont think we should have a problem, we are the biggest MITM site in the World! and with the up and coming new season we will see a huge surge in numbers, i'd say we will have a at least 50% increase over the running of season 7, people get remined/have questions/wanna talk bout ep etc, we might get inodated and wish we didnt have so many! :D
 

Emrysgirl

New member
What would the member of the week get? If it's an award then you might end up with too many of them. Maybe some kind of privilage or something. Maybe best post of the week so that then people will know what thread to look at.
 

Ryebeach

Moderator
Emrysgirl said:
What would the member of the week get? If it's an award then you might end up with too many of them. Maybe some kind of privilage or something. Maybe best post of the week so that then people will know what thread to look at.
I'm very sorry, I should have gone into detail earlier with my idea. If a Member of the Week was done, the member could receive a customized banner with their username which they could put in their sig for the week they are MOTW. Maybe they could also have a custom title, "Member of the Week" too and put an announcement in the Grotto for congratulatory messages to the member as well. I was thinking the member could be chosen by Admin, yardgames and J each week based on whatever criteria they choose. I was thinking it could be based on members who have contributed thought provoking/positive posts etc. but it could also be based on length of membership, # of posts. There are many ways to do it. It's a fun way to get people involved and posting, in my opinion. :)

Also, best post of the week sounds like a very good idea too. :)
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
I like best post of the week. We could honor Darren if he ever posts his Stilts analysis. :)

But seriously, that's a pretty good idea.
 

Jimmy Junior

New member
I think the stars and rep points thing is a good idea, because you have a visual tally of how much you've taken part. Forcing members to post could be counter-productive because it would encourage people to post crap, like they do on the FOX forum.

Personally, I only really write long and detailed posts when I see a topic which interests me or which I have a real opinion on, for example the 'moon-landing' thread and the recent 'mobile phone' thread.

Unless you wanted the grotto to dominate the forum, you'd need to advertise only in MiTM-related places.
 
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