Right Side Forum has been in development for over a year. It has had more revamps than you would ever believe. However throughout this process, we always knew in the back of our minds the biggest test would be promoting the site. We've been going now for two weeks, and we have 126 members at the time of writing to show for it. This isn't a bad start.
None of us have any experience with promoting websites and it is proving time consuming and difficult to say the least. We know who our target audience is, which of course is a must. Here is a list of what we have been doing to promote the site:
- Link exchanges. The Internet is full of blogs and we have made contact with hundreds of conservative bloggers to exchange links. You will note the result in terms of our growing 'Blog Roll' on the home page. In terms of our Google ranking, this really hasn't improved at all, although we perhaps don't expect it to for some time. But we have no problem with exchanging links with like minded sites. They are specifically targeted and was something we planned to do either way so it turn out we are killing two birds with the same stone!
- Facebook. Social networking sites are new to us but is something that is proving to be an invaluable resource. We have set up a profile although in retrospect it probably should have been a group, but we'll live on learn! Facebook allows users to set up 'groups' for all sorts of causes. This again has allowed us to reach our target audience. We have over 100 'friends' on Facebook. A fair few of them have been over to the site since.
- Google. Google is your friend. Well, perhaps not currently, but it is the best resource out there for tips. We have found sites like the Open Directory Project which does exactly what it says on the tin. The Internet is full of places to advertise your site without the need for spam.
- Other Forums/Blogs. This method has been surprisingly effective. The RSF team have naturally always had an interest in blogs and forums of a political nature. So commenting on other forums and blogs also can help us kill two birds with the same stone. Our admin team can go about their normal Internet business in commenting on other forums and blogs, whilst at the same time promoting our site with user names that match the site name and in the case of forums, providing a link in the profile and profile signature.
- Bookmarking sites. Everybody has heard of Digg. Digg is just of one of many of these types of site. For example, we have accounts on Newsvine and Digg amongst others. Again the trick for us is to not just link to articles, but where given even the hint of an opportunity - PROMOTE your site. We like to talk about what we offer that is unique, because the 'just another forum' feeling will get us nowhere.
- Persistence. We have had the pleasure of talking to numerous other 'experts' and owners of other successful websites. The key theme has been being persistent. We have a team that ensures we can be 'active' pretty much everyday. We are also determined having devoted probably hundreds of hours and a lot of money into the site. This is an added incentive. For that reason alone, we are going nowhere and intend on sticking it out. By believing we have something unique to offer, we are confident eventually we will get to the stage promotion will take care of itself. This is probably a long way off however.
- New ideas. Finally, it is no good to get into a 'routine' habit. You can't rely on reaching the quantity of people you need to each day if you're only targeting the same web sites and using the same tactics. We are constantly looking for new ideas to get the message out. We can't rely on search engines, so our only option is to look for ways to get the RSF name out there!
None of those things are difficult. Anybody with a website and a keyboard can do them. We have done all that and have 126 members in two weeks to show for it. We're not quite sure if that is 'good' but it is a start. It is that time of year, not everybody is particularly interested in this sort of thing at the moment, next year is a big political year for the world in the US presidential elections and of course in the UK local elections. There will be an enormous membership drive next year, but laying the foundations early is a sensible idea nevertheless.
If anybody has any other suggestions, feel free to share them....
Best wishes
RSF admin team.
Sunday, 23 December 2007
Thursday, 20 December 2007
Greetings
This probably isn't your average blog. It's not about opinion and it's not even about a person or cause.
This blog is effectively about a website, a new starter. A group of developers is writing for it. We would be lying if we said it wasn't partly for promotional reasons, because in a way it is, we do want people to read, and we'd love people to join!
We hope it will be interested nonetheless because it will document the (hopefully) growth of a new starter. The internet is a competitive place, and new websites need to be cutting edge and unique to prosper or even survive. We'll be looking to blog about what we are doing to promote the site, to develop it and anything else regarding it. We would also very much like to see suggestions and comments from other people who might be in a similar situation, perhaps with their blog or others that have tried and failed, or hopefully even succeeded.
On that note, it is probably a good idea to tell you a bit about the site:
The site in question is called rightsideforum.com. It is a conservative forum and hopefully in the future activism forum for British conservatives. Importantly, we stress that does not mean 'Conservative Party' specifically.
Without going into a political rant, let it be said, we are conservative minded individuals, we support conservative governance and we welcome all like minded individuals. You can find out
more of course by visiting the site.
The site has been heavily influenced by similar initiative in the States, including freerepublic.com and democraticunderground.com. Both of these sites have a membership over 100,000. Both respect the diversity within the Conservative and Liberal coalitions in the US. We hope long term to be able to replicate the success of these sites and provide a leading conservative discussion and activism forum.
So how are we working towards this?
As was said, we understand that to succeed or even to just survive you need to be cutting edge and unique.
We'll tackle both of those now.
Cutting Edge
Quite a bold phrase isn't it? Well, we can't quite 'fully' claim that. Our software is VBulletin which is perhaps the best money can buy in terms of forum software. BUT, ours has been heavily customized. VBulletin offers numerous add ones - extra features users can install introducing things from simple template edits to custom portals. In short, it has inspired designers to produce products related to the original forum software that have themselves made their creators millions of dollars.
We have and continue to work on several custom products. We have a specific vision for the site and we have committed to introducing new features as often as possible. At the moment we are concentrating on standard forum features, but in the future we hope as the forum develops we can focus on activism related features.
The best feature we boast is an interactive newsroom. This is a feature only available to members. It is a page with categories each containing RSS feeds. You can then click on an individual feed, say 'BBC News' which will be display with bullet points the titles of the 5 latest items at which point you will be taken a page (still on our site) that will contain the same information, but it will also display a brief summary for each item on the list, basically the opening paragraph to each article. To the right of each item is a button that says 'Talk About It!'. This button allows you to create a thread on a particular story. You will then be diverted to a page that allows you to choose which forum the item will go in and from there the thread will be created with all fields filled out automatically.
Pretty clever eh? We like to think so.
So far as I can see, none of the big forums contain this tool, and for us lazy folk, it certainly speeds up the posting process and can let you get onto airing your views of whatever you have posted a lot lot quicker!
That is just one example, if you view the help link on our site, you can delve into what else we offer.
Not all of it is 'cutting edge', but few forums are as committed to developing features as we are, nor do they seek to canvass user opinion as much as we do.
Unique
Again, another bold claim to make, and again we could never claim it '100%'. BUT, without question Britain lacks political forums, we also lack conservative forums so far as we can tell. I honestly don't think this is down to a lack of interest, I believe it was a gaping hole that cried out to be filled. I really hope we can fill it!
Established conservative sites are plentiful. We are miles ahead of left wingers, despite Labours recent success with 'Labour Home' a similar sort of site in a way.
But what of Conservative Home? Well, they are the kings when it comes to British political websites. Full of useful information, big name contributors and a loyal base of readers. The site is focused around that aspect of things, and we admire them for it - seldom do any other sites get a mention in the main stream media, but Conservative Home has several times. We differ, in that we are focused on USER opinions and views. The site is to be user driven. We are strongly interested in member opinions and this is why a 'forum' is different to a collaborative blog. Labour Home is trying to combine the two, in that users essentially are 'blogging' yet it has the distinct feel of a forum.
We do share many similarities with Conservative Home in that we seek to promote conservative blogs and conservative causes. We could never hope to match them for their cutting edge commentary and analysis. Both sites are linked to each other, and we are proud to give them extra promotion via the banners you see on the home page.
On the international stage we are nothing new, but domestically speaking we have plenty to offer that is new and hopefully exciting to you!
We'll leave it there for now, and for the record we will look into changing the look of the blog a.s.a.p.
Best wishes
This blog is effectively about a website, a new starter. A group of developers is writing for it. We would be lying if we said it wasn't partly for promotional reasons, because in a way it is, we do want people to read, and we'd love people to join!
We hope it will be interested nonetheless because it will document the (hopefully) growth of a new starter. The internet is a competitive place, and new websites need to be cutting edge and unique to prosper or even survive. We'll be looking to blog about what we are doing to promote the site, to develop it and anything else regarding it. We would also very much like to see suggestions and comments from other people who might be in a similar situation, perhaps with their blog or others that have tried and failed, or hopefully even succeeded.
On that note, it is probably a good idea to tell you a bit about the site:
The site in question is called rightsideforum.com. It is a conservative forum and hopefully in the future activism forum for British conservatives. Importantly, we stress that does not mean 'Conservative Party' specifically.
Without going into a political rant, let it be said, we are conservative minded individuals, we support conservative governance and we welcome all like minded individuals. You can find out
more of course by visiting the site.
The site has been heavily influenced by similar initiative in the States, including freerepublic.com and democraticunderground.com. Both of these sites have a membership over 100,000. Both respect the diversity within the Conservative and Liberal coalitions in the US. We hope long term to be able to replicate the success of these sites and provide a leading conservative discussion and activism forum.
So how are we working towards this?
As was said, we understand that to succeed or even to just survive you need to be cutting edge and unique.
We'll tackle both of those now.
Cutting Edge
Quite a bold phrase isn't it? Well, we can't quite 'fully' claim that. Our software is VBulletin which is perhaps the best money can buy in terms of forum software. BUT, ours has been heavily customized. VBulletin offers numerous add ones - extra features users can install introducing things from simple template edits to custom portals. In short, it has inspired designers to produce products related to the original forum software that have themselves made their creators millions of dollars.
We have and continue to work on several custom products. We have a specific vision for the site and we have committed to introducing new features as often as possible. At the moment we are concentrating on standard forum features, but in the future we hope as the forum develops we can focus on activism related features.
The best feature we boast is an interactive newsroom. This is a feature only available to members. It is a page with categories each containing RSS feeds. You can then click on an individual feed, say 'BBC News' which will be display with bullet points the titles of the 5 latest items at which point you will be taken a page (still on our site) that will contain the same information, but it will also display a brief summary for each item on the list, basically the opening paragraph to each article. To the right of each item is a button that says 'Talk About It!'. This button allows you to create a thread on a particular story. You will then be diverted to a page that allows you to choose which forum the item will go in and from there the thread will be created with all fields filled out automatically.
Pretty clever eh? We like to think so.
So far as I can see, none of the big forums contain this tool, and for us lazy folk, it certainly speeds up the posting process and can let you get onto airing your views of whatever you have posted a lot lot quicker!
That is just one example, if you view the help link on our site, you can delve into what else we offer.
Not all of it is 'cutting edge', but few forums are as committed to developing features as we are, nor do they seek to canvass user opinion as much as we do.
Unique
Again, another bold claim to make, and again we could never claim it '100%'. BUT, without question Britain lacks political forums, we also lack conservative forums so far as we can tell. I honestly don't think this is down to a lack of interest, I believe it was a gaping hole that cried out to be filled. I really hope we can fill it!
Established conservative sites are plentiful. We are miles ahead of left wingers, despite Labours recent success with 'Labour Home' a similar sort of site in a way.
But what of Conservative Home? Well, they are the kings when it comes to British political websites. Full of useful information, big name contributors and a loyal base of readers. The site is focused around that aspect of things, and we admire them for it - seldom do any other sites get a mention in the main stream media, but Conservative Home has several times. We differ, in that we are focused on USER opinions and views. The site is to be user driven. We are strongly interested in member opinions and this is why a 'forum' is different to a collaborative blog. Labour Home is trying to combine the two, in that users essentially are 'blogging' yet it has the distinct feel of a forum.
We do share many similarities with Conservative Home in that we seek to promote conservative blogs and conservative causes. We could never hope to match them for their cutting edge commentary and analysis. Both sites are linked to each other, and we are proud to give them extra promotion via the banners you see on the home page.
On the international stage we are nothing new, but domestically speaking we have plenty to offer that is new and hopefully exciting to you!
We'll leave it there for now, and for the record we will look into changing the look of the blog a.s.a.p.
Best wishes
RightSideForum.com admin team
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