Promotion/Social Media Sharing

[OpenMind]

I am trying to find buttons to share my forum via social media, but I don't see that it is available...perhaps these logos could be optional on each forum (and subforum). I would like to ability to share only three or four logos of my choice, versus the billions of social media options that exist. 

In addition, I would like to be able to insert a button or link at the bottom of my posts (and personal emails) to allow people to invite friends to my forum. I would also like to give users this option that would direct them to a pre-typed invitation with the body copy and the subject set by me that could be altered by each user. Is this possible?

One last idea: I would like for the option to promote my forum to be prominently listed at the top of every page, either as a button, or part of the menu bar. To get to this option now, I must first select profile, then friends, then invite friends. Seems somewhat hidden?

Take care,
Jonathan

[Ryan Roos]

There are no buttons for social media. At the top of every thread is the Actions drop down. inside that you will find the Share option and the ability to share the thread on Facebook or Twitter. We already have plans to add these options to individual posts. But that will not be until a future update after launch.

We already have an invite feature. Go to your Profile and click on your Friends tab. In the upper right is an Invite Friends button. We don't understand how having that button on posts or emails would make any sense. You invite who you want. Why would i want to see a link to invite people in your signature? You can make your own link that says something like "Join my forum" and goes directly to registration. But that isn't something we would make a feature. Most members most of the time would not want that taking up space on every post. You could have the link take them to a hidden custom page that has a great big well written invitation as well and then have the registration link on that page.

I don't understand your 3rd request at all, I'm sorry. You want an option to promote your forum... on your forum? On every page? You can promote your forum however you want. But I don't see how having a button on your forum is going to do that. If people are already there then what are you doing besides adding clutter to your forum making it more confusing for new members. The Invite Friends feature is on the page it's on because it is limited. You can't just spam people constantly with it. There are limits to it's use and it must be managed. And how would you have enough emails that you constantly need to have a button readily available at the top of every page (and in every post and email, based on the last paragraph)? This isn't something we view as being a default feature for everyone.

Feel free to customize your forum as you wish, but we will pass on this idea. Thank you.

[OpenMind]

Apr 15, 2013 8:04:00 GMT -8 Ryan Roos said:

There are no buttons for social media. At the top of every thread is the Actions drop down. inside that you will find the Share option and the ability to share the thread on Facebook or Twitter. We already have plans to add these options to individual posts. But that will not be until a future update after launch.

I didn't try the actions menu, perhaps because it was placed next to a search box and I subconsciously assumed the drop-down menu applied to that box. I was scanning the top of the message body for this feature and assumed it would have been in that area, but since it wasn't in the cog icon, I figured it didn't exist.  

We already have an invite feature. Go to your Profile and click on your Friends tab. In the upper right is an Invite Friends button. We don't understand how having that button on posts or emails would make any sense. You invite who you want. Why would i want to see a link to invite people in your signature? You can make your own link that says something like "Join my forum" and goes directly to registration. But that isn't something we would make a feature. Most members most of the time would not want that taking up space on every post. You could have the link take them to a hidden custom page that has a great big well written invitation as well and then have the registration link on that page.

Why would you want to see a link to promote a forum devoted to helping support your career? If you were a therapist and knew that there were power in numbers.... that your salary depended on other therapists banding together in order to support the field you paid thousands of dollars and devoted several years of study in graduate school, then you might be more sympathetic to the cause. 

But if it were completely illogical to "promote my forum...on my forum," then why include the "Invite a friend" feature on this site?

I don't understand your 3rd request at all, I'm sorry. You want an option to promote your forum... on your forum? On every page? You can promote your forum however you want. But I don't see how having a button on your forum is going to do that. If people are already there then what are you doing besides adding clutter to your forum making it more confusing for new members. The Invite Friends feature is on the page it's on because it is limited. You can't just spam people constantly with it. There are limits to it's use and it must be managed. And how would you have enough emails that you constantly need to have a button readily available at the top of every page (and in every post and email, based on the last paragraph)? This isn't something we view as being a default feature for everyone.

I wasn't intending for this to be spam; I was intending for this to be a way for people to spread the word to other therapists. The therapists and professors I've contacted have been very enthusiastic about the idea of a forum to connect people in our profession and want to help spread the word when I am done tweaking the forum. One professor will be announcing it to her various classes as soon as I tell her the forum is ready.

My profession suffers from a severe lack of cohesion and communication, and as a result, funding for lobbying is almost nil, which negatively impacts the field by affecting insurance reimbursement and a host of other very important issues that ultimately boil down to salary and scope of practice. If therapists are already on this forum and want to help promote it to other therapists, I was trying to make it easy for them to do so by typing a pre-made invite message describing why the forum is important and how their posting activity can help propel the field forward. 

Upon further thought, it might be easier and better to simply create a sticky post with a sample pre-made invite message that people can mail out using their own address list versus going through your servers, so this topic is a moot point.

You don't have to reply to this post.

[Ryan Roos]

I did want to reply. Just to say sorry for the misunderstanding on both our parts.

Your second paragraph above leads me to believe you thought I was insulting you possibly. I was not, and did not mean to. Your original post was very confusing.

Let me try to explain it like this. It sounded like you were asking for a way to sell tickets to a baseball game... at the baseball game itself. Like in the stands, but the people are already there and already have tickets. You wanted to promote your forum, on your forum (like advertise for it, on it). See where I get confused? What you really meant is that you want to promote your profession or therapists or whatever on your forum. That's different and totally doable. I thought you were asking for a way to invite people to your forum on your forum. Like they had to be there to get the invitation to bring them there. See the confusion? Which is very different from the Invite Feature in your Friends tab. And you mentioned putting it in emails too? The Invite feature is on your forum. It can't be in an email. But you are more than welcome like I said in my last post to create a link and put that in emails and your posts.

I also was not saying you were going to spam. I was saying that we don't put that button out on the home page because we don't want people spamming. An option to send emails to people on every page isn't needed. If you need to invite someone then you can go to the Invite area. Otherwise you don't need that feature. And while you may even have 200 people's emails to start, why do you need a button on every page after that initial 200? You don't. Because you don't have an endless stream of emails to plug in and you can't invite someone more than once. The Invite feature is managed on the Friends page for members to invite friends they may want to join (and is limited in number for everyone not the admin). You can absolutely tell people in your community about it and do your best to get people to use it.

Your sticky solution would work and would be something I would suggest. Just like I was suggesting that you place links in your posts or emails. But you can't have the invite feature from the Friends tab in your signature. That needs email addresses to invite people. And hopefully by now you get why I was so confused that you would want a link in your posts on your forum that pops open a dialog that asks me to enter emails when I'm already on your forum to begin with. You don't need to invite me, I'm there already. I already have tickets to the baseball game. And why I was even more confused, because you can't open a dialog from your forum in an email. Plus if you're already in an email, why would you need to send emails. Just invite the person by asking them.

Make sense? Hopefully. We seem to be talking about the same things, but thinking about them in completely different ways.

[OpenMind]

Your second paragraph above leads me to believe you thought I was insulting you possibly. I was not, and did not mean to. Your original post was very confusing.

Thanks for the clarification, and I can see how the wording of my first email confused you, so I apologize as well. I should have been more specific, but sometimes concepts seem clearer in our own minds. What I originally meant to say is irrelevant since I realize what the solution is, but I appreciate you taking the time to explain yourself. 

Let me try to explain it like this. It sounded like you were asking for a way to sell tickets to a baseball game... at the baseball game itself. Like in the stands, but the people are already there and already have tickets. You wanted to promote your forum, on your forum (like advertise for it, on it). See where I get confused? What you really meant is that you want to promote your profession or therapists or whatever on your forum.

Let me clarify: I didn't want to promote my forum to my users, since they are obviously already there. And while I do want to use the forum as a tool to coordinate promotion and lobbying efforts, that isn't what I meant either. 

I did want to promote my forum... on my forum...but not in the same way you were thinking   I simply wanted to compel existing forum users to become actively involved in helping to promote the forum to other therapists. When I saw the "Invite a friend" feature, I fixated on this as the tool to use to accomplish this goal, but obviously became short sighted in all of this at 4:30 in the morning, since apparently there is this revolutionary invention called the "forward button" that happened to skip my mind. I just need to create a compelling email from the start that asks therapists to forward that email to other therapists to get them to join and participate. If I am successful in pleading my case, then that is where I will generate users. If other therapists find the forum via Google, I will have a sticky on the general forum asking them to do the same. Problem solved, and I don't need the invite a friend link. In fact, it's easier and more effective to forward an email than to use the "Invite a friend" feature.

So anyway, sorry for the confusion. This has felt like a very geeky rendition of "Who's on First." You may return to your regularly scheduled program now... and thanks for the reply. 

Sincerely,
Jonathan

[Ryan Roos]

I think I've got it now. Thank you for replying again. Sometimes these concepts can be complex in writing. I should just do video replies.

Glad you have your solution. And you've figured it out. How you market your forum is entirely up to you. It would very likely be more effective to write a compelling email to your colleagues than to use the canned formatted response of the invite feature. I think you're forum is going to do just fine.