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If I might say something to this Mark?

I am totally agreeing with you in that all the marketing in the world will not help a new member unless it is shown to them in simple and easy language all the steps the need to be taken to get the full benefit of belonging to this community.

So what to do and how to do it becomes the logical question.

To me it starts with the process of when a person joins the community, with the welcome letter from the admin, where it can and should be stated the steps needed to help complete their profile and recommend the forums to go to so that they can learn about the community.

When they log on, they should be given prompts with some kind of a % percentage of what needs to be done ( example images, about me etc.) 20%-50% 70% and so on....

The simple fact is that you can only do so much to help any new member and while I agree with the intent to help, it must be up to the person also.

Like anywhere else you go on the net, you will either like what you see ( window shopping) and come in and maybe the person will come back the second time, to me the real trick is getting that new member to come back the third time and want to stay or at the very least make Adland one of their top places of choice... it really is a hard call and it is even more difficult to gauge how a person will react.

I feel we can all debate semantics and even go in circles, but to me I think it is going to take your talents Mark, Jim/Dennis talents and everyone else's talents to make Adland a place for people to want to come back that third time.

While some people may disagree, Adland has been behind on many things when it comes to being a force on the net, but that is changing and all you have to do is look around and see the changes that are happening. It is all going to take time...in the meantime, while the programmers do their magic and while people continue with their daily lives, it is going to take all of us to keep coming up with ideas and working together to make things work in the best possible way.

Everything has its place and everything is a process...

Thanks, Diane,

For reiterating my suggestion of the percentage fulfillment of what people should do about their photo, profile, etc.

I think visitors and new members would stay longer or visit more often if the recent forum posts were scrolling onscreen, and near the top of the page, more like a real-time chat format, instead of having to look for recent posts near the bottom. A lot of new people have no idea about recent forum post history.

A real-time scrolling chat or more visible forum history near the top of the page could also get more people to post more often and keep it going, without large amounts of time passing with no posts.

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Hello Diane and Mark,

I wish I was as good with words as she as this is basically, what I was saying only not in such a refined way. My apology Mark, for coming off any other way.

Jim

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If I might say something to this Mark?

I am totally agreeing with you in that all the marketing in the world will not help a new member unless it is shown to them in simple and easy language all the steps the need to be taken to get the full benefit of belonging to this community.

So what to do and how to do it becomes the logical question.

To me it starts with the process of when a person joins the community, with the welcome letter from the admin, where it can and should be stated the steps needed to help complete their profile and recommend the forums to go to so that they can learn about the community.

When they log on, they should be given prompts with some kind of a % percentage of what needs to be done ( example images, about me etc.) 20%-50% 70% and so on....

The simple fact is that you can only do so much to help any new member and while I agree with the intent to help, it must be up to the person also.

Like anywhere else you go on the net, you will either like what you see ( window shopping) and come in and maybe the person will come back the second time, to me the real trick is getting that new member to come back the third time and want to stay or at the very least make Adland one of their top places of choice... it really is a hard call and it is even more difficult to gauge how a person will react.

I feel we can all debate semantics and even go in circles, but to me I think it is going to take your talents Mark, Jim/Dennis talents and everyone else's talents to make Adland a place for people to want to come back that third time.

While some people may disagree, Adland has been behind on many things when it comes to being a force on the net, but that is changing and all you have to do is look around and see the changes that are happening. It is all going to take time...in the meantime, while the programmers do their magic and while people continue with their daily lives, it is going to take all of us to keep coming up with ideas and working together to make things work in the best possible way.

Everything has its place and everything is a process...

I'd like to expand more on my idea of real-time chat, if the programmers could do it. Members can easily get more branding exposure just by having their photo & name and participating in community chat on a consistent basis, and also get any questions answered immediately by anyone who's online, instead of having to find certain forums.

It could also bring the community together more if there was a community open scrolling chat, not just forums where we only hang out with our own friends and some people are banned from certain forums anyway. It may need moderating for spam or disagreements, even if there's only a small amount of typing allowed per chat post. I think it would bring in more traffic and keep the traffic here more than there is now.

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I'm just going to quote my 2 suggestions from page 109 about percentage of activity, etc. I think I was misunderstood or not acknowledged at the time, so thanks if my ideas got into anyone's head!

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There are different ways to persuade people to log in more often and be more active...

Appeal to the marketers to set up their signature files and visit forums & post, and create their own forum, all that will generate traffic for them and for the community, and nominating themself will also help them gain more name-recognition, photo branding, and traffic.

The appeal to non-marketers is about having a place to chat every day, make friends, and share their interests.

Maybe creating a 100% bar of activity to help people get active & stay active: Having a forum, posting to forums, inviting & accepting friends...something like that could help. (There's a 100% activity bar for Gold Membership in the Advertising area, to show people what they can & should be doing in that area to fully use it, maybe it would help here also!)

Percent bar for being eligible for nomination:

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My idea is to get people to fully use the Community area, if the programmers can create a percentage bar showing our own activity on our homepage, so members know what they can do here to achieve a participation level that can help them gain more recognition.

For example the percentage bar for the Gold advertising membership has about 6 items, each with around 17% activity, and when people do all those, it shows 100% usage of Gold.

In the Community, having a several-item activity bar would be interesting, so newer members would know to upload their photo, fill in their About Me, start a forum with topics in it and post to it (not empty forums), accept friendship invitations, and maybe a few other things to help them get the full experience of being here.

Also a 100% bar of eligibility for being nominated with these items on it:

Member for 90 days,

Logged in within 30 days,

Active forum,

Photo of themself,

Not a winner within the calendar year...

Each of those items could be worth 20% and if someone meets all criteria, their eligibility bar would be all the way full to 100%. Then people would have no doubt if they're eligible.

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Maybe let more people know they can earn from promoting there Adlandpro Link and raise the amount on it also let people know they can earn on the surf site here and raise that amount as well. Kathleens idea is great but in todays economy being so bad people are looking for ways to earn xtra income. Just a thought!!!

Also maybe implement a download for A Adlandpro tool bar i have several tool bars that i can just click on and go directly there to the site, also one for the surf site.