Club Marketing

[Josiah Wallingford]

Club owners are asking, how do you market us? 

Any ideas on the best way to market members clubs?

One idea I have is to have a forum where club owners can create posts for marketing. We then manually add their marketing to our newsletter. I would have to manually do it because I would want only club owners/leaders to have access to that forum (how do I do that by the way?).

I could just have the forum accessible to all members but I would not want it gunked up with a bunch of random stuff.

I wish there was a way to automatically "promote" to our picks, new clubs. Is there?

[Joel R]

This is an awesome topic for discussion.  Thank you for bringing this up @Josiah Wallingford as it's something that I've been thinking a lot about too.  I recently invited a guy over from Yahoo! Groups, and he's moving over his 2,000 members and all of his content but we're also struggling in how to get the word out, how to email, and how to engage with those members through the IPS platform.  

Some things that I want to do / will do:

- Bulk mail to formally announce the introduction of the club.  I still believe email is the most powerful medium to engage with busy people and I always see a huge spike in traffic after any bulk mail, so I want to harness that traffic for the club.

- I've requested IPS allow mailing capabilities for club owners, but I have no idea if that's something on their radar or not.  Club owners need a way to engage with their own members, whether by PM or email.  

- I've seen @crmarks use the new Announcements tool in 4.3, that could be a great way to feature a Club of the Month. You can also use Notices by @Fosters which stylistically fits with the default IPS design.  

- Make sure you also integrate clubs into every part of your site as much as possible ... The club widget, listing clubs in form index, using announcements, etc.  

- I privately reached out to my community's super-posters and directed them to join the club.  That way the club owner gets active users from the beginning.  

I'm a member of multiple communities that offer tools like gallery, downloads, and social groups but they're not actively used and those sections are ghost town in otherwise vibrant communities.  I've never wanted to offer something just to offer it, so I think we - as the overall admins - need to support our micro communities as much as possible.  They're a part of the family now and their success in a club is a shared success with us.  

[Josiah Wallingford]

Thank you @Joel R . 

Some ideas I have been kicking around are:

1. I just got the Newsletter application by @HeadStand . I am hoping I can add some kind of trigger to my newsletter that will automatically add any new clubs (with the exception of Private clubs" to the newsletter with the clubs description. I have asked in the newsletter application support for if this is possible. Hopefully, I will hear back soon.

2. If I can get IPB to automatically add someone who creates a club (club owner) to become a member of a new "Club Owner" group (and maybe club leaders could also be added to this group or a separate group) I could create a forum for club owners/leaders only where they could tell me what they want to have promoted and add that content to the newsletter.

3. I would love it if the club owners could post to a forum that only they can post to but everybody could read and comment to called "Club Announcements". Those club announcements would be added to the newsletter and/or Our Picks.

I plan on Clubs being the main product and focus of my community. Forums are just used for feedback, suggestions and introductions. The only thing that clubs are missing is the ability to have a robust forum that allows the club owners to create their own categories. I know collaborations application allows for this but I would prefer to use the integrated Clubs system as much more development is focused on that by the community of developers here.

[opentype]

Don’t make it too complicated. You don’t need new functions or apps or special sections. I write monthly bulk mails where I announce noteworthy content from my sites. I include a bullet list with newly created clubs. Takes hardly any time to compile this. 

[Josiah Wallingford]

3 minutes ago, opentype said:

Don’t make it too complicated. You don’t need new functions or apps or special sections. I write monthly bulk mails where I announce noteworthy content from my sites. I include a bullet list with newly created clubs. Takes hardly any time to compile this. 

That would work fine and I could do that for new clubs. And I would be okay with that.

But, what I need is a way for club owners to promote their stuff. I could manually add club owners to a group but if a club owner transfers ownership of the club to someone else I would want that person to automatically be removed from that group.

I could just have a forum where club owners could post stuff they want promoted (newsletter or announcements) and then manually add that stuff to the newsletter. But once again I need to be able to have the club owners/leaders be in a specific group for this.

I like automation. It makes my life easier. It is a pain to setup but if you know what you are doing and keep track of the automations you have set up, they make life a lot easier (at least for me).

[opentype]

3 minutes ago, Josiah Wallingford said:

I like automation. 

Me too. But if it requires to connect 4 parts and 3 of those aren’t even available yet, it might not be worth it. ?

Another idea: Use the Commerce advert system and let the club owners run ads this way. That’s directly available. 

Also: this one includes club feeds with the header image automatically pulled in. Also a nice way to feature new clubs:

 

[Josiah Wallingford]

2 minutes ago, opentype said:

Another idea: Use the Commerce advert system and let the club owners run ads this way. That’s directly available.

Please do tell me more. This might be very interesting for me. How could I use this? I have not explored adverts yet. Could you provide an example of how this might look?

3 minutes ago, opentype said:

Also: this one includes club feeds with the header image automatically pulled in. Also a nice way to feature new clubs:

Also interested in this. What would be a good example of how I could use this? Would this be in combination with using adverts?

[opentype]

1 minute ago, Josiah Wallingford said:

Please do tell me more. This might be very interesting for me. How could I use this? I have not explored adverts yet. Could you provide an example of how this might look?

It uses the regular (core) ad system that is part of the suite. You just allow your users to run ads on it by selling it through Commerce. 

1 minute ago, Josiah Wallingford said:

Also interested in this. What would be a good example of how I could use this? Would this be in combination with using adverts?

No. It’s just feed blocks. You can create a widget with the lastest clubs. That’s part of the suite already, but it comes with a dull listing viewing showing just the name of the club. The SuperBlocks template pulls in the club header image and offers several layouts. 

[Josiah Wallingford]

I don't like the idea of advertisements being splattered around my community. Maybe I could have a membership (group assignment) that would disable ads.

I would like the ads to show up in email though. I don't see an option for that in products advertisement settings in the user's guide. Is it possible to include ads in emails? Also, I would only want the advertisement purchase option to be available to Club owners. 

[christopher-w]

On 5/4/2018 at 9:23 PM, Josiah Wallingford said:

I don't like the idea of advertisements being splattered around my community. Maybe I could have a membership (group assignment) that would disable ads.

Great topic.

I think it depends on the quality of the ads and the context in which they are delivered. A well placed 'ad' is helpful if it solves a problem.

I'm using:

(NB41) Enhanced Advertisements 1.0.8

in conjunction with Google slides to deliver mine (well, will be when sites goe live). You need some CSS to hide the play bar, which I can supply, but it's very good. Animated or not etc. And free. Very simple to use. I will be using it to promote clubs, articles etc given it's very quick to create something reasonable. 

Hadn't thought about charging for them as I like to control the look and feel of everything on my sites. But I guess I could supply a design and place package.

(showing slides 2-4 of a 6 slide Google Slide 'ad'.) 

 

 

 

[princeton]

Great discussion...

A lot of people struggle with Clubs/Groups. There is no sure-fire way to make it a success. This has been going on for years. 

@Josiah Wallingford I really don't think a forum would help much here.  

Most Clubs/Groups fail because its leaders are not active. A Club is no different from a Forum. It needs constant attention - especially in the beginning.

I would place the onus on the club owner to market their Club(s). Of course, you offer them the tools to do this.

Some Ideas...

Promote PARTICIPATION throughout the site. The more active they are the likely someone will learn about their Club. Topics in active Clubs are found in Activity/Search.

Offer a Guide with Basics on running a successful Club. For starters, a Club has to be unique to attract attention. It shouldn't clash with a forum that offers the same discussions.

Signatures - Suggest to Owners to add a link to their Club in their signature. The more active they are the more visibility they will get.

Place an Ad (a widget or something) in Profile that profile owners control. (I would offer this as perk for Paid Membership.)  The Club owner could then use it to market their Club. Of course it will only benefit them if they are active on the site. How many times have you checked out a  profile of a user who just posted on a thread?

I would definitely promote active Clubs in the newsletter. I'm just not sure if I would promote new/slow Clubs. The Club owner has to prove themselves first.