anyone here have your members help you?

if so, how do they help you specifically

if not, why not? you could be missing out on some great and sometimes much needed help

there are a whole bunch of way i can list of that my members help me in a very real and valued way, alas i am very sleepy and heading to bed now though

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Philly Sports
Delaware Online
PA Forums

I sometimes ask for volunteers to do something (sometimes in exchange for an award) and it's worked pretty well most of the time. I got five volunteers to promise to build and manage a MySpace page for the forum (must ask them how it's coming along, no results yet)

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Science Chats | Disabled NYC | The Chic Petite

I have had a few members help me in forum in the past and I have always appreciated the fact that they wanted to do something for the community. Like one of the member recently created maps so that people could refer to them online while planning their trips, while others do a good job of policing the community and try and report posts which contain spam message.

But at the end of the day, I feel it is their quality posting and being helpful on the forum, which helps me the most as it not only encourages more members to join in the discussion, it also helps instill a sense of community.

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Why most forums fail within 1 year!

India Travel Forum | India Travel Directory | Free Travel Directory

When I first read the title of this post I thought it said "getting your mother to help you?", and thought "That's a bad idea, my mom barely understands what I do..."

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Science Chats | Disabled NYC | The Chic Petite

lol, thats funny! my mom and my sister both are very active on my sites...

my members help in quite a few ways...

Every member i have that has a website or works on a website or blogs gives me links, nice links too, and banner placements, a great help for advertisement and seo both.

I have quite a few members who are very talented writers. This helps me cause im not that great of a writer, at all, so when i need something good written i ask them. They have written a outstanding press release, a great email to use for the inactive user reminder hack, welcome messages, monthly emails (newsletters), advertising materials, you name it they helped me. This is probably one of the greatest way my members have helped me and im sincerely grateful for it.

Another member composed a list of allllll the local links for this page here too CLICK

I posted a few long posts in another thread here on vbs earlier. It contained a few links to posts by a man named Joe Walther. I go to "JW" when i need ethical, moral, advice when there is a serious issue to be hashed out, he always helps me and is probably the smartest, most honest and educated person i have never met (but hope to soon). I have asked him quite a few times to put into words my feelings on making those tough judgement calls that we as admin have to make sometimes and he does a oustanding job. He's retired now but is a very accomplished, syndicated blogger, amongst other things.

Last but not least, the members of the staff, GL in particular, just signed up here on VBS today, i really could not have been this successful without him. He is a major part of Both TD and he runs (admins) TalkPA and does a damn fine job if i do say so myself.

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Philly Sports
Delaware Online
PA Forums

Thanks for the kind words boss!

not a problem man, you deserve it!

well yesterday i dropped off the letterheads i got printed up to our "marketing department" on the Delaware site (it's really just 2 members and me, they are great though) so hopefully within the next week we will be getting a little local press *crosses fingers*

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Philly Sports
Delaware Online
PA Forums

Just to offer this up too, and while it can be viewed as blowing smoke up the backside of a member here, but.............

I think if you are a likeable, easy going and approachable admin, people are going to be more willing to want to help out in any way that they can. It is not just enough to have a good product, you have to have a good Admin that makes people want to help out.

I've been on many forums and felt that there were some that have staff or admins that were not very friendly or worthy of my time in helping out. Needless to say, I have gravitated away from those forums but learned a great lesson from them.

My members support the forum by giving honest feedback; I have been lucky enough to have a message board where the members feel like they're part of a community and are able to be open with each other. They also submit content for the main site and participate in contests. If they like the place enough, they also advertise. =)

~Crystal

One thing I've done here is just trying to get the pages indexed fast, giving the member incentive to post with sig links.

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