2009 Planning Guide - My Gift To You!Blog Community Building
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Right, here’s the deal; We’re looking for ways to improve your user experience as a visitor to our neck of the pasture. Not that we think it’s not good enough right now since you and we both know there are no cooler bovine bloggers around! It just seems that the plain old comments section doesn’t cut it when you guys are trying to have a decent conversation. The threaded comments plugin works but this seems to add extra lines across the screen when you scroll.
Thanks KingJacob for reminding us via email. Hopefully this will be resolved with the new upcoming theme!
A few suggestions were named on DailyBlogTips dot Com and we think that some of them are doable. But we need you to tell us what you’d like to see so we can work on it!
A few things we could do:
- Add a forum. It’s easy peasy to do this but we’d need people willing to post and people willing to moderate.
- Start sending out a bi-weekly newsletter with some highlights about your blogs. Not much interaction but more exposure for your blog!
- Setup a chatroom. Remember the good old days when everyone was chatting and nobody had even heard of blogging?
There’s always the other possibility of course to leave things the way they are right now. We’re open to any suggestions you might have. In the meantime we’re happy to report to you that we’ve just received a couple more site review requests so we’ll be getting a new bike shortly! We’ll use all the money that you guys donated us to buy the most expensive lock available! Perhaps we should enter our own $500 cash competition this month and see who wins 
Thanks again Darin, Colleen, Blogaboutyourblog,macewan and Julie! (Did we miss anyone else that donated? Let us know so we can linkback to you too as a thank you!)
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I think a bi-weekly newsletter will do. There are already enough forums out there and a chatroom will just attract idiots that join just to mess around. That’s just my opinion though.
No need for a chatroom, as for a forum, moderators will do the trick. I am on here enough to be one ^_~
I am also against chat room. Because the problem is that some of the people will use the chatroom instead of the comments section. Comments are always available for others to read, whereas chat logs are not.
I’m willing to moderate for your forum.
Me 2
hhhmm how about johncow t-shirts or little cow “acton figures”, I dont really know what will make it better other than a newer wider theme.
I like the T shirt idea…. maybe you should do a bobble head, lol.
I am also eagerly waiting for the new theme. I hope it is no way similar to JohnChow.com
I would leave the comments as they are, If you start a forum you may get people spending more time on there than actually reading your articles.
I think the weekly newsletter is a great idea, I am subscribed to a few of these with various blogs and it is a great way to catch up on stuff on the weekend when you are less busy.
I agree. Also, there are already a lot of forums out there (Digital Point) like I said before. The newsletters will actually bring you MORE traffic as well as the blogs that you are going to feature.
Newsletter would be an interesting idea to try out.
Newsletters are better than chat anyways
That is a great point, maybe Cow should do that first, and then maybe a forum, maybe.
Hmmm, how to develop a community beyond the comment section. That is an interesting and enviable dilemma.
1) With all the IM options out there, does anyone still use chat rooms?
2) What exactly would be the purpose of a newsletter for regular readers beyond the obvious database you would build? Didn’t you just fire yourself from a bunch of projects? Do you really want to start having to edit a biweekly newsletter?
3) Like you say, a forum would be simple to launch and you have plenty of traffic to get it going. You have some very serious talent among your loyal readers. I don’t think finding moderators would be difficult. I’m afraid the hardest part would be wading through the applicants to find the quality. Not unlike dealing with guest posters
The more I think about it, a forum seems like the obvious next step. You can still build your email database and even include the newsletter in membership. I would, however, recommend starting with only 1 or 2 sub forums instead of the shotgun strategy I’ve seen others use.
Congratulations on your success and I commend you for your forward thinking.
You could always point your readers towards BlogLight.ning
I don’t like to subscribe to newsletters over RSS subscriptions. Can’t remember the last time I was in a chat room. And everybody is right, there are a lot of forums. But I do think you have a good chunck of users that already communicate off-topic in your comments would not mind an outlet in a place like forums. Ad Trackers got some great advice for you too!
Keep it just as it is- a blog. Take the additional time and effort you would have to dedicate towards a newsletter or a forum and use it towards improving what you already have even more.
I think considering the traffic you have now along with the age of this blog, going beyond the boundaries of a blog would not be a really good idea.
I agree there. Always focus on your blog more than anything else. The more you try to do something, the less time you will have on your main site.
Can’t help but agree here too, forums would be cool, but I like JohnCow as is…
It’s all about experimenting, I am sure Mr. Cow knows well about how projects can truly be time consuming so therefore I think he should at least try everything once. If it doesn’t work out, keeping as it is now won’t really do anything else to this blog.
Forums are pretty cool, Id be willing to help out
I vote newsletter, I’m lazy and like having things delivered to my doorstep.
Hah great, everyone has a different opinion! How are we gonna pick now? We used our audience help. Perhaps it’s time to call someone now or do the 50/50.
Haha. Call me!
Do them all?
OK, 50/50.
“Computer, take away two wrong answers.”
Removed - Chat room - Pretty universal opinion here.
Removed - Leaving things the same - That just wouldn’t be the Cow way would it?
It sounds as if you were to start a forum with out changing the blog and publish a wrap-up/newsletter everyone will be happy.
Of course, you can still call Sly
Yes, a forum seems the way to go. To keep it separated from the blog, we would get it on a new domain and not a subdomain. Who’s any good with forum software? And what’s recommended guys? Vbulletin? phpBB? SMF?
We’d be looking for moderators too obviously so all that are interested say Moo!
I’ll be a moderator =]
you could use bbpress.
It could be a new home for Steven!
LOL
A forum would be really cool and a great way for others to share in their money making on their blogs in one place, besides the comments.
There are already lots of blogs like that, which is the reason why I think a forum would not work.
Why don’t you do a question and answer thing? Most of the pro bloggers seem to do that when they’re feeling lazy and have run out of ideas. Might be fun.
I think what he is referring to here is a poll…
Would a chat room really get enough traffic to make it worth while?
I think that all of the things, like chatrooms, distract people from your blog. That’s a bad thing, because that’s where your ads are, unless you can put some ads in the chatroom..