Help get new members

[Steve B]

It looks like the growth of the member list has slowed quite a bit after the initial sign-ups of us devoted members from the old forum.

I'd love to see this community grow and add new and quality contributors. Then, I got an idea - I went through my address book and sent an e-mail with a link to the site to everyone I thought might benefit from our community. It was easy to find about a dozen people (my accountant, my dentist, friends with businesses etc.). If all 43 of us do this - we can grow this thing without having to wait for the search engines to find us.

[KristineS]

Steve B that's a lovely idea and a very generous impulse. Obviously we'd all love to build traffic and a personal recommendation is a great way to do that.

Thank you for helping us with this goal. It is appreciated.

[cbscreative]

Awesome, Steve, thanks. I went ahead and did the edit for you too.

[Steve B]

Well - we added two more since yesterday.

I invited 11 yesterday. If half of the other 44 of us do it - that will be 242 personal invitations going out to people that already know us. If only 20% of them join the forum - we will more than double our membership.

Anyone else inviting friends and business associates?

[vangogh]

Thanks Steve. I've been letting everyone I know, know about our community. I've also been linking back here where I can. Linking to the forum is another way people can help build the community if they want to.

We're also going to offer some code everyone can use to display a badge on their sites. Steve has already designed them and I just need to find a little time to write the code for everyone to copy and paste. Hopefully before the weekend is out they'll be ready.

[cbscreative]

I know the other admins will agree with me on this one. We deeply appreciate all those invites going out and it's good to know the word is spreading. It is important that our numbers grow, but I don't want to say that without pointing out that the quality of members we already have has made this a great success. It is that quality that will attract other members. Once more business owners find out about this forum, they too will want to be a part of it. Thanks to everyone here for that!

[KristineS]

We definitely appreciate all the help in getting the word out. It's great that you are willing to help us make the site grow.

[billbenson]

I've been racking my brain trying to think of people, but my contact list is pretty short.

I did go back to the old forum and bump the thread for here as it had drifted down the list. I actually am surprised they didn't delete the thread. I only saw one name I recognized with a recent post. Didn't see any spam. I didn't look to hard though. A lot of features don't work over there. Seems like most just drifted elsewhere and may not have seen the post promoting this site. Two moderators that I saw and one nonsensical web marketing sort of post by one of them.

[orion_joel]

Something interesting i just come across, i attempted to visit the old board seems the following

You have been banned for the following reason:
No reason was specified.

Date the ban will be lifted: 08-09-2010, 12:00 AM

Not sure if anyone else has had the same. I don't think that it could be IP based, because i have tried on two connections one with a static IP the other with a always different, it does not even seem to go to a page which would pickup login data.

For new members, at the moment i have a fairly small contact list as well, but will send something to as many friends and colleagues as possible.

[cbscreative]

Joel, you too, eh? Welcome to our elite club. I wonder why they banned you though, maybe they've resorted to banning everyone who came here now. Before this, the only ones we knew about were vangogh, Evan, and myself. If that's what they want to do, we welcome everyone banned from the old SBF. It's their forum, they can run it any way they wish, and none of us have any regrets, nor do we bother to hold it against them. We can only hope they learned something important from all of us bailing on them, and maybe they can fill a different need and be successful. Their success or failure is not our concern. We are here only because it was needed.

Congrats on being banned.

[vangogh]

Welcome to the club Joel. I guess they banned you because you were a mod over there and are now here. Shows they're paying attention to what we're doing and are checking us out.

It's all kind of childish, but whatever. It's their forum. They can do what they want I guess. I think they'd be better to focus on making their forum better instead of worrying about us, but what do I know.

[cbscreative]

I didn't realize Joel was a mod. That probably explains it.

[orion_joel]

Yeah i was a moderator over there. I do not know when the ban went on probably sometime in the last week though, because i posted earlier this week. Just tried access in IE and can see the page not logged in so must be a username ban and i was logged in on both the computers i tried.

[cbscreative]

I can't help but wonder if others there are going to notice that some of the "oldest" members with high post levels are getting banned and wonder what's going on. I think what you said, vangogh, about them focusing on their forum instead of us would be better. The irony is, they don't need to ban us. I for one have no interest in going back anyway. If they're afraid we're going to "steal" more members, that's all the more reason they should be working to improve their forum.

With the original reason for this thread in mind, I'm sure most of us here got to know a few people well enough that you have email addresses. Those people are sure to wonder what happened and letting them know about this new SBF will give them the opportunity to rejoin the community. In addition, we can all find others to invite that weren't members because many of them would probably want to join us too. We can see that the word is getting out, and that's very much appreciated.

[pete]

To be honest, I sort of got turned off when I got a PM through the old .com forum sort of giving me a hard time for still posting there.

I don't like it as much as I did, and I appreciate what you guys are doing, but I have no intention of abandoning it at this time.

I may if they don't fix the "remember me" login deal, however.

I really didn't like being scolded.
.

[cbscreative]

Ouch, pete. I don't know who that was and probably don't want to know. But I can say this, that is not what I want to see at all. We want this to be the best forum, but I don't have any problem with the old SBF being successful too. They made a serious blunder, but the Internet is a big place and there's room for both of us. If they learned something valuable and use it to turn their forum around, fine, but I hope our members will be above "scolding" anyone for participating in the old SBF. That's not why we're here.

[vangogh]

@Joel - I can understand why they would take away our moderator privileges, but the bans seem silly.

@Pete - Sorry if you got PMs suggesting you were doing something wrong for posting on the old forum. I don't think that was any of our intentions. For me this was simply about the old forum being neglected and people wanting a better place for the community.

I think there's room for both forums to survive and thrive.

However I think if the old forum wants to survive and thrive it needs more attention than it's been getting. My sense is it won't get that attention, but you never know. In fact I think the only reason it's gotten any at all the last week or so is because of us.

[Steve B]

"I'm sure most of us here got to know a few people well enough that you have email addresses."

I think that's a good idea. I know a lot of the regulars are not even checking the old site anymore. In one case, I went to the guys website and found his e-mail that way.

The total number of members has been growing - slowly but surely.

[billbenson]

It has surprised me some of the people that didn't come. I suspect in some cases it was people that posted for increasing post count and link dropping and may blame this forum for the demise of the old one. Anyone ever check to see if the old form dropped in the SERPS relative to say 6 months ago?

[pete]

Not a big deal, I blew it off.

And no one in this particular thread.

Now why don't one of you graphical types come up with a little banner link?

[billbenson]

I was thinking about someone else in particular pete, not you.

[vangogh]

Pete we have some banners we're going to use as badges. Steve already did the graphics and I just need to set up the code for people to copy and paste. Only so many hours in the day and I'm trying not to do too much today, but it's at the top of my list of things to do.

The code itself is easy to create. I need to figure out a good way to let everyone here see the link to the page. I can easily create a new thread, but that could get lost quickly.

Then again as long as I remember where it is I can always create the more permanent link to it later.