How will you increase membership?

[Jay Masimo]

The website operates well, possibly better than Photo net, from which it was largely inspired, a sure sign of dedication and hard work. Nevertheless, I am disappointed by the limited membership count.

 

[Gerald Cafferty]

At the time when Patrick started this venture PhotoNet looked on it's last legs.
PhotoNet is still around, but how long till the next crisis?. We need to support Fotofora because there's room for both and who knows what the future may bring.

 

[Mickeyess]

At the time when Patrick started this venture PhotoNet looked on it's last legs.
PhotoNet is still around, but how long till the next crisis?. We need to support Fotofora because there's room for both and who knows what the

First, in my opinion Patrick pulled off a minor miracle to create and stand-up FotoFora. Furthermore, Patrick appears to be engaged with the members soliciting input and making changes where they make sense. This is the kind of leadership that Photo.net has lacked for a very long time; FIVERR only made matters worse.

We also need to be honest. There has been a noticeable decline in participation at FotoFora, especially over the last couple of months. Turning that around will require some marketing to reach out beyond disaffected Photo.net users.

Here are a few of my ideas regarding marketing FotoFora.

Where?

• Target colleges with photography programs
• Target companies large and small
• Target villages, cities, counties
• Target photography clubs
• Target your community
• Target spring and summer programs hosted at public or quasi-public venues
• Target agricultural and/or manufacturing
• Target transportation

How?

• Identify their activities
• Identify their community of interest
• Identify their community value
• Identify their community weaknesses
• Identify their desire for recognition
• Identify opportunities for sponsorship (colleges? businesses?)

When?

• Identify whether the entity has an activity cycle based upon seasons or other criteria
• Identify possible competitors
• Identify possible benefits. Each of these entities can benefit in some manner.

Why?

• Free publicity and promotion in some manner.

For example, targeting young photographers and their instructors at colleges taking photography courses. These young photographers are likely to have a desire to share their work and learn from other photographers. Use FotoFora’s forum thread “Critique my image”. Collaborate with the college, professors, and students.

Perhaps FotoFora could establish the long sought after online “contests” such as photo of the week/month. This need not require that the winner receives an award other than the recognition that their work has merit.

Consider dedicated forums, albums, or other presentation alternative to further enhance the benefits to entities. For example, Patrick lives near to the Corning Glass works in Corning, New York. I toured CGW’s glass museum and factory many years ago and believe that this could be an excellent start. Could we establish a forum or album for Corning / glass works / glass art? How about other museums and/or historical sites which might want free publicity from 1 or more photo shoots along with promotional articles on FotoFora.

Possible example: I (we) recently visited %location%, and were greeted by Joe Smith, curator, who guided us around the museum. Joe provided background…. Blah, blah, blah… Here are X shots showing the highlights of our visit. Blah, blah, blah... Come join us at the %location% for some great fun and photo opportunities.”

Expand Featured photos to include new member’s work examples. Invite new members to submit portfolios or articles about their work.

These are just a few ideas that are getting free rent in my brain.

Activities can be outlined and presented in a forum thread by FotoFora leadership and/or members. Ideas can be refined and pursued as agreement is reached on scope.

Other ideas?

Now. Can we develop and action plan together rather than leaving it all to Patrick?

 

[Jay Masimo]

Good intentions no doubt, but to target villages, cities, countries - companies large and small - agricultural and/or manufacturing - transportation etc., all sounds amazing, but is it realistic though?
and to identify community values, interests, weaknesses, seasonal activities etc., furthermore does seem a little beyond the scope of what is feasible.
If one can afford an add on Facebook, Instagram, Tik-Tok, ex-Twitter or whatever, that may help, but focus and precision are what is required.

 

[Mickeyess]

Anyone game to work on social media?

 

[Mickeyess]

Good intentions no doubt, but to target villages, cities, countries - companies large and small - agricultural and/or manufacturing - transportation etc., all sounds amazing, but is it realistic though?
and to identify community values, interests, weaknesses, seasonal activities etc., furthermore does seem a little beyond the scope of what is feasible.
If one can afford an add on Facebook, Instagram, Tik-Tok, ex-Twitter or whatever, that may help, but focus and precision are what is required.

Hi Jay.

Thank you very much for your response.

First, I like your idea of exploring social media and think that it is well worth polishing so that the result has a punch. I don’t currently use social media but am willing to go down that path with you and others to develop a strategy and move it forward.

Second, the ideas I presented are essentially “spit-balling” in nature and not meant to suggest that we do all those things. We can pick the low hanging fruit and polish the strategy like we can with your idea of using social media.

Do you, or others, have thoughts about where we might try to promote FF after – or consecutively – with social media?

All feedback is welcome!

 

[Mickeyess]

I have created a new email address along with a new Facebook account to be used in the event that Patrick Thrush and others wish to explore this option to promote FotoFora.

 

[Jay Masimo]

It would be nice if the administrators could let us know if they have any strategy planned to increase membership.
Would a membership fee be of any use, to be used in buying advertising space in social media for example.

 

[Jay Masimo]

Caffertey / Mickeyess, we appear to be conversing in a void .. even the offer of financial help does not appear to interest them

 

[Mickeyess]

I find it unfortunate that FF admin has not responded. I am keeping my account open for now hoping that we see some action(s) revealed to bolster the site's membership and contributions.

 

[Gerald Cafferty]

I do not want my name associated with a movement to undermine the governance of FotoFora. Papa Tango has my full support, GC

 

[Mickeyess]

Gerald,
Papa Tango, as I have said in this thread, has done an excellent job of developing and launching FF.
I have made private and public comments intended to foster suggestions and help for Patrick to increase membership and contributions. I remain ready to help; however, this is Patrick's work. We therefore require his feedback, participation, guidance, approval in order to plan and execute a coordinated effort to achieve the results that we would all like to see. I, nor any other member, can unilaterally make this work.
I've made several suggestions in this thread.
Let's get started.
Now, where is the feedback?

 

[Jay Masimo]

I do not want my name associated with a movement to undermine the governance of FotoFora.

No one suggested any such thing. The stated intent was to assist and contribute (financially) in developing membership, That said, administration does not seem to be interested in discussing the matter with its members.

 

[Mickeyess]

So it looks like we all would like to see FF succeed.
May I be so bold to suggest we exchange some ideas and then how we can make them actionable?

 

[Papa Tango]

I need to stop looking at pictures and pay more attention to the discussion boards as I totally missed this thread!

Thanks to everyone for your kind comments. Forum boards were never meant to serve as gallery and image discussion sites--there are much better solutions for that in WordPress and other CMS platforms. But sadly, the forum side of those generally sucks on a busy site. Compromises are always in order and site publishers are most often at the mercy of third-party developers to extend what they do. And heaven help you if one of them decides to drop that add-on and do something else with their life.

I have been building websites for nearly 30 years now--beginning with static text-based HTML 1.0 pages (often filled with flashing, moving, and otherwise maddening GIF-animated images). Ahh, the good old days! Nothing except one's ISP server ever broke, there was no spam, and badguys were not trying to crash your site by brute force thousands of times a day. Keeping a community going requires knowledge, planning, time, money, and most of all--community interest in participation.

When I took over admin at PN in January of last year, it was obvious pretty quickly that no one would invest much of anything in the platform. Nothing has changed in the past year, except for my resigning as admin and building this community.

Mickey and I have been having an ongoing conversation about marketing the site. Here is something important to know:

I am outstanding at the various professional things I do. I am also an astoundingly lousy businessman...

That said, I am glad that we are finally having this discussion. Many good ideas are on the table and there are directions to go. But for the next month or so, NO ONE CAN REGISTER!

Remember my little proviso about third-party developers? Well, that has happened to the site's registration/subscription software addon. Due to updates in the forum software, addons, and PHP on the server--it died.

This is actually a good thing and I am taking advantage of the doldrums to provide something even better. Oh, there are a couple other thingies that suffered a similar fate and are being addressed as well. Those are nothing that you likely have not even noticed are missing.

To solve the issue around 16 of us (other Xenforo site publishers) have contracted XF addon developers Ozzy47 and Painbaker to write us a new subscription addon from scratch. Woo Hoo!

In the meantime for fun, I have turned on the Chat function. The Classifieds are on now too as I am doing some work there as well. That's something that needs an active membership to work. Here is an example of it in action over on Photrio. Sean Ross and I use the same Xenforo platform for our respective sites.

Classifieds

www.photrio.com

BTW, FotoFora has always offered paid subscriptions--until the addon died several months back. Much more to discuss about these things, but for right now I have to run. My parole officer is at the door and I really need to answer it...

 

[Jay Masimo]

I am outstanding at the various professional things I do

I do not recollect Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven or Einstein ever having said that, just joking, but good luck with the future.

 

[Papa Tango]

I do not recollect Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven or Einstein ever having said that, just joking, but good luck with the future.

Neither do I, but they never tried to run a business--and were supported in their pursuits by privilege, wealth and power...

However, let me apologize for the abruptness of my earlier response. The part about business that is troublesome to me is people. And people have been at the root of what has happened--and is happening to the FotoFora community--not the operations side as my rambling response would seem to indicate.

Soon after we launched, trouble came in the guise of several bad actor members. Participation dropped and registrations slowed. Corrections were made, and then a kerfuffle over image content decreased participation again, and registrations stopped. Until PhotoNet crashed for a week in November 2023 that is, and then 15 people immediately joined and were regularly participating here. I am curious why that ended as soon as the problem at PN was fixed. The bad business trait here is my propensity to wait and see if human fires will burn out.

I did not put them out quickly enough. This will not be a mistake repeated in the future...

Since February of this year (the one-year anniversary of our birth) we have had 50 registered members--all of who supposedly possess cameras. Yet in that same time, only 8 of us have been posting images or discussions--two members have since deleted their accounts and left the community.

In the entire month of May, 20 images were posted--3 of those are mine. No one is discussing the images, or having discussions in the regular forums. One might say, the place is nearly asleep.

Some good ideas have been suggested for marketing the community. But the fact remains one cannot market a ghost town. Without participation and activity, there is no motive to join or subscribe. And that is the place FotoFora finds itself in now.

As alluded to in my first response, some major changes are coming to FotoFora. I have taken advantage of our doldrums to upgrade several functions of the site, including the obsolete and broken paid subscription software. For the past month, member registration has not been available. If one can't register, there's not much sense in launching a membership campaign. The good news is that my software developer has delivered the new platform and it is being configured and tested now. Registration should be available again within a week.

That leads to some other major changes. All of you joined under the "Pioneer" membership class. That is now closed to new members, and you will always be in that exclusive group! Its purpose was and is to recognize and reward forever the first "settlers" to FotoFora. Nothing changes for you.

Here are what I believe to be some important points and actionable items that are necessary to reinvigorate the FF community:

• When the upgraded system goes live, new members will choose from three different levels of membership; Explorer (basic & free), Navigator & Voyager (tiered paid annual subscriptions.) Later, more information will be available about these subscriptions.
• A series of campaigns are planned at that time. That discussion will be in a different thread later on.
• The challenge right now is jumpstarting the community with our existing resources!
• If we're to begin adding new members, the community must look like a place they want to be. With few exceptions, we have all migrated from PN. From our knowledge of each other in that community, it would not be extremely untoward for anyone here to reach out to another member with whom they felt some kinship or affinity, and encourage them to become active.
• When posting an image, say something about it whenever possible. That invites discussion.
• When viewing an image, go beyond the regular like click and comment on it. In the galleries, there is a review feature that few have used. Give it a try!
• When registration reopens, invite friends from PN or other communities you may belong to and ask them to join you.

There are other directions underway as well, but these are my thoughts at the moment.

 

[Mickeyess]

Neither do I, but they never tried to run a business--and were supported in their pursuits by privilege, wealth and power...

However, let me apologize for the abruptness of my earlier response. The part about business that is troublesome to me is people. And people have been at the root of what has happened--and is happening to the FotoFora community--not the operations side as my rambling response would seem to indicate.
...

There are other directions underway as well, but these are my thoughts at the moment.

See my email to you

 

[Jay Masimo]

they never tried to run a business--and were supported in their pursuits by privilege, wealth and power...

None of the three gentlemen in question were born into privilege and wealth, they all struggled to succeed.

Yes, Beethoven’s father was a court musician, however he did not sit at the banquet table, he entertained it. Beethoven was almost deaf by the time he wrote the 9th Symphony and Einstein was penniless before accepting a job in the cellar of the windowless patent office, after having been refused an academic post, haha.

I just read a superb, gripping biography of the challenging, early life of Leonardo written by Walter Isaacson, possibly better known for his more popular style books on Jobs and Musk, but none of this is pertinent, apologies, it was my evening pub-crawling habit of never resisting a silly joke.

Your efforts with Fora are commendable, I wish it all success.

 

[Mark Keefer]

Anyone game to work on social media?

I am attempting this. One method that could be done that would not be a blatant advertisement which could be frowned upon by other social media interest groups is if an interesting article posted on FF, to post a link to that article/thread on FF on Photography Boards on Facebook which really seem to have a lot of activity. At least it would start getting people with photography interests aware of FF. I believe photo classes in colleges are another avenue but that may take some more work. Posting flyers with a QR code phone scan link on public bulletin pin boards at coffee shops around universities and colleges. Also link it to a photo contest is a thought. I don't know how hard it would be to pitch to camera shops, they may be tempted if there was an advertising angle, the contest and prize is sponsored by XYZ Camera Shop or manufacturer.