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Gosu71
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Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 7:05 pm Post subject:

To further prove my theory on using Twitter to your advantage - Some 'latest news' came out regarding a game we cover on our forum. Myself and another user using our forum Twitter account 'Twitted' this news, using the hashtags I mentioned in a previous post. We have just got our record for people online _________________ http://modernwarfare2.myfanforum.org THE Modern Warfare 2 forum www.modernwarfare2.myfanforum.org

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Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 10:20 pm Post subject:

It's called tweeting, you "tweeted". Furthermore; the point of a forum is to attract people to register and contribute, correct? How many of those guests convert into actual users? I could easily get a few hundred people on my forum, but if they're not registering and posting what's the point? My problem with all these quick solutions; buying members, posting competitions, blog posts, twitter etc. is that they do not generate people actually interested in your forum, if they're not truly interested they'll get bored and stop after a few hours/days. I run my own forum and I have never had to do any of these methods and my forum is very popular, we get well over 50 new registered users per day and see an average of 20 users online at any given time - none of this setting the time out to 60 minutes, it's set 6 - and this is all because my forum is unique. Yes, shock horror, I went with something unique. The perfect solution; unique idea that there is a demand for or at the very least a unique approach.

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Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 12:34 am Post subject:

while(); wrote:

It's called tweeting, you "tweeted". Furthermore; the point of a forum is to attract people to register and contribute, correct? How many of those guests convert into actual users? I could easily get a few hundred people on my forum, but if they're not registering and posting what's the point?

Load of rubbish.

If you actually read, you tailor the hashtags to your sites interest.

Like I have said, i've proved my theory works and im posting it for others to use to help them out.
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Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 1:10 am Post subject:

Gosu71 wrote:

Load of rubbish.

If you actually read, you tailor the hashtags to your sites interest.

Like I have said, i've proved my theory works and im posting it for others to use to help them out.

You didn't answer my question; how many of those guests converted into frequent forum users?

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Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 2:46 am Post subject:

he probably can't put a number on it, but it stands to reason that if you get guests then some join. _________________ Family Friendly Shareware \| \| Web Design/Services \| Free Forums

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Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 9:01 am Post subject:

That's fairly normal logic... the more visitors you have the more people you have signing up. It's rough to question a site of "how many of them converted to users" when the site itself has had an astonishing growth rate from the start. No, not everybody that visits will join, but of the say 150 guests that visted there were probably a good 10-15 that signed up. _________________ Harsh Reality - Unleash your creativity! Harsh Reality

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Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 9:57 am Post subject:

Zudane wrote:

That's fairly normal logic... the more visitors you have the more people you have signing up.

It's rough to question a site of "how many of them converted to users" when the site itself has had an astonishing growth rate from the start.

No, not everybody that visits will join, but of the say 150 guests that visted there were probably a good 10-15 that signed up.

I don't see how this can be a viable tactic to grow your userbase; he offered a ps3 - what's that, like, £300? - and posted a link to his forum, if I'd seen that on twitter I'd have clicked it regardless of what the forum was. My point is, anyone can dangle a big juicy carrot in front of people, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to join his forum and contribute.

It just seems stupid to me to say that twitter is a good tool for getting forum members when you're not actually targeting the people who'd be interested.

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Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 6:43 pm Post subject:

I understand - you would not join for that reason. But someone else may have gone for the same reason. While they were on the forum they saw the community, they saw the posts, they saw something they liked about the forum. Then they join. If you can't get visitors to your site you won't get new members. Not every visitor will join, that is certain with every single site you can possibly imagine. In fact only a small portion will join. The point is that if you can bring them to your site, and have your site attractive enough for them to browse it then you might make them want to join. No, Twitter was not the reason they joined. Twitter was the reason they found the site, the joined because they enjoyed the site. You are arguing that what is true for one part of the visitors is true for them all, and that is a fallacy. Some will join, some won't. Gosu was simply pointing out that Twitter allowed many more people to find the site, the ones that liked it stayed, the rest left. _________________ Harsh Reality - Unleash your creativity! Harsh Reality

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Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 7:02 pm Post subject:

Zudane wrote:

I understand - you would not join for that reason.

He touted it as a viable method to get proper members for your forum and my point is that it isn't. You may very well get a few people signing up but you have to remember that he just posted about offering a FREE playstation 3, he didn't tweet "This is my cod4 forum" he tweeted "win a free ps3". Winning free stuff isn't specific to anywhere, you could say "win a free ipod" to a bunch of people who like to play games, it doesn't mean they're interested in it. It's free stuff. I hate console gaming, but if you said to me "here's the opportunity to win a free ps3" I'd take it, but I'd never be a member of that forum.

I'd love to see the results if he actually tweeted something about the forum and not some sort of prize; he essentially was advertising a prize not his forum and that's why this isn't a good representation of the use of twitter.

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Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 1:06 am Post subject:

I use twitter for my forum as well. I use the wefollow hashtags for #calcio #seriea and the hashtags for the various different italian football clubs, so obviously i get members signing up as my forum is directly related to what the followers of those hashtags would be interested in. However, and to answer Admin's earlier question, twitter frowns upon constant spamming such as "check out my forum" being always sent to the same followers of those hashtags. Twitter bans spammers from being allowed to use hashtags and other certain privileges depending on how blatent your spamming is. It is better for me to post a tweet with a comment like "Roma Forum - Supporters discuss new manager Ranieri >> [link to Roma thread]". This way, my followers and the hashtag followers know whether or not they are bothered checking it out before they click on it. Also, this practise won't piss people off so you keep your current followers and don't get reported to twitter for spamming. _________________ Football Italia Forum

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Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 8:22 am Post subject:

Thank you, that was what people needed to know. _________________ Family Friendly Shareware \| \| Web Design/Services \| Free Forums

Gosu71
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Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 8:14 am Post subject:

while() wrote:

Zudane wrote:

I understand - you would not join for that reason.

He touted it as a viable method to get proper members for your forum and my point is that it isn't.

You are totally wrong yet again.

Read my previous posts and learn.
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Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2009 2:54 am Post subject:

Can you go into a little more detail about using twitter to your advantage as far as promoting your forum goes? I'm new to twitter and only have a basic understanding. Right now, I broadcast to #mma , which I believe is my target audience. I put #mma at the beginning of all my tweets. Is this the most effective way? Any advice is appreciated! _________________ MMA Network mmanetwork.myfreeforum.org

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Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2009 7:29 am Post subject:

RyanScarp wrote:

Can you go into a little more detail about using twitter to your advantage as far as promoting your forum goes?

I'm new to twitter and only have a basic understanding. Right now, I broadcast to #mma , which I believe is my target audience. I put #mma at the beginning of all my tweets. Is this the most effective way?

Any advice is appreciated!

Imagine twitter as a global SMS, instead of sending your SMS to a single person you send it to everyone who wants to access it. There's a database of all these that people can search, hash tags work in that they "associate" your tweet with a specific thing, so if you send out "#mma this is my mma forum: <link>" then anyone who searches for "#mma" or "mma" or "mma forum" will see this tweet. Hash tags are also used, in part, for the trending topics. If you see in the sidebar it says "Trending topics", these things are the most talked about things on twitter in the past few minutes, so if you and 1000 other people tweeted "#mma this is my forum" it may very well end up as a trending topic - don't try this though, they have stuff to protect people making accounts and doing it. "mma" or "#mma" would be just as effective, however it has become accepted that if you use a hashtag you're providing information on the tweet. So you could just say "this is my mma forum: <link>" and it'd be just as effective as "this is my mma forum: <link> #mma", but it is assumed that hashtags are the "proper" thing to do.

The problem is that very few people are actually going to search for this term on twitter, they're entirely more likely to use google for example, twitter is great for finding out about new discussions and news, not new websites.

I would recommend against spending your time using twitter if your only aim is to get forum members, it really won't work.

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Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2009 3:31 pm Post subject:

while() wrote:

RyanScarp wrote:

Thanks for the articulate response. For now, I just have twitterfeed active and it'll post a link to the site with every rss tweet. Thanks again for the reply!

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