Dominion Link wrote: ↑Thu Nov 22, 2018 8:46 am
but I do find loading photos and links a bit cumbersome via my phone or when the internet service is weak at home, which is all too frequently.
I'm looking if there are improvements out there. Since this is all browser based, it requires you to click 5 more times than on any FB or twitter app. That would necessitate creating an App.... Winter is coming. Maybe there is time for that.... Or maybe finding a freelancer that can create it for us....
windwalkingwolf wrote: ↑Wed Nov 21, 2018 8:49 pm
The only thing that BYC has going for it, that we don't, is page visits--you can Google a question about poultry health, or breeding, or incubating, and chances are good that some of the top search results will be BYC pages. So, they get views (which means the ads do as well). Big whoop. I would be willing to wager that very, very few of those "views" translates into membership/contribution.
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One thing that can possibly be "fixed" is the search function within the board...it's horrible. For instance, earlier I wanted to reference Andy but couldn't remember his username, so I tried searching for "Andy" because he at one time signed his posts. It would not return any results unless I added two more words to the search line, because "Andy" returned too many results, perhaps because it searched for "AND"??? So I tried "resistance is futile", something he was fond of saying, and got two pages of results but none of them relevant, because several others of us are also fond of saying it
I gave up, because I figure it will come to me later (it did), and it wasn't that important anyway. As a test for the search function, I searched for "losing feathers". The search doesn't return exact matches, as it should, it gives you all posts with the term "losing", and "feathers" in the post. That's annoying, and if I was a first time user looking for something important, I would give up.
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Paying for advertising...I really don't know how well that would work. I mean, people keep doing it, so it must get some sort of attention/clicks/sales, right? Where would you advertise?
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"Friendly People. No Trolls."
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I think we should find a way to play up our strengths, make the group more attractive to people who are looking for what PTO already offers, rather than change PTO to cater to what people are deciding they want right now. Because as a general rule, when people get what they want, it very quickly becomes Not Good Enough, or Something Completely Different. An individual person may be smart, but people are dumb as stumps
and that's what Facebook is--people. A mindless mob of people taking a break from reality. I don't think it's a bad thing that that this group has so far avoided that.
Wow, what a post WWW!
Translation of views -> members -> posts:
I can get you that stat, too.
It's a very, very small number. But it's a number none the less.
Search function:
I have some dials I can tweak available. Thanks everyone for bringing it up! That is definitely on my ToDo list.
Where Advertising? On Facebook!
Seriously though. They offer quite a customization and have different kinds of offers for the advertiser. There is pay by the 1000 clicks. Or pay by results, in our case it would be new members. Customization can also be done to target audience by region, gender, age, .... So it would be targeted.
Bottom line is that a new member gained through that would cost between $3-5 in advertising. That would grow our pool by ~40 to 50 if we spend the donations that way. And because the ratio of members to "regulars" is around 1 in 200, I have not done anything there. I keep thinking there have to be better ways to reach people at shows/sales than that.
Or advertise on feather fancier? That would reach the target audience, too.
"Friendly People. No Trolls."
LOVE IT! Anyone else have other cool ideas? We don't have to have one single one anymore. I can have them cycle through as well.
Play to strength.
Absolutely! That seems to be information, information and more information (in an organized form and verified to work in canadian winters).
I think we have the solution called "Fowl Facts" to something like that. It's a starting point anyways. Needs some TLC....
. The flakes burn brightly and then peter out, or go out with a bang... and the lifers keep coming back to the hobby again and again, no matter how often they think their minds have changed. Of course, now that I've said that, someone will be determined to prove me wrong, and sell off all their birds in a fit of pique 
I can always count on you Pete to keep me humble 
