Partner with Facebook Group

[Yugang]

ScapeCrunch is much better than FaceBook for more detailed discussion, threads, history search as well as peer review of the quality of content. While growing, ScapeCrunch is still a rather small community.

FB has more fun with photos and videos, and more users and traffic. What you post on FB will be lost soon, there is no history or search, and I guess I am not the only one who feels it is a waste of time posting there.

IMHO the two, forum and FB, need each other. Try to make a partner ship with a good planted tank Facebook group, or start it, and leverage the strengths of both platforms.

 

[Yugang]

Facebook : @Yugang , I’m curious what you mean by partnering with an existing Facebook group. What would you hope we would get from that? Are you thinking we scapecrunch needs more users, or more video capabilities or…. I guess I think the Facebook space is already evolved into existing groups that work there, so help me understand what your thought is

My idea is not fully mature, needs to be worked out and negotiated.

Several in our aquarium community worry that fora in the long run may have a hard time to survive, and that FB will be the winner by sheer number of users and content. This would be a big loss for the community as a whole, because FB does not bring the quality, longevity and structure that fora have.. Also, various fora and FB groups compete, so it is not easy to link from one to another, without moderators getting annoyed.

So perhaps one approach would be to have a partnership, sharing the same goals and same user group, with seamless links between the FB partner and the forum partner. No competition, but cooperation. 1+1 = 3.

Does it make sense?

 

[Luciën]

I try to stay away from companies as meta and such as much as possible. I get my kicks on non commercial fora and services.. It would be great if more people would start using fora's more so I get your point..

 

[Tim Harrison]

Starting a ScapeCrunch Facebook page and posting highlights from the forum is easy to do and and will inevitably drive traffic to the forum. But not necessarily the right kind of traffic. Depends what your aims are. Same with Instagram and other platforms.

Either way it's more work for the moderating team unless someone, who's prepared to give up time, is recruited to do the additional work.. And that in and of itself also presents a potential problem, finding someone that can be trusted, not least to stay on message and maintain the brand.

 

[Yugang]

Starting a ScapeCrunch Facebook page and posting highlights from the forum is easy to do and and will inevitably drive traffic to the forum. But not necessarily the right kind of traffic. Depends what your aims are. Same with Instagram and other platforms.

Either way it's more work for the moderating team unless someone, who's prepared to give up time, is recruited to do the additional work.. And that in and of itself also presents a potential problem, finding someone that can be trusted, not least to stay on message and maintain the brand.

Valid concerns, agree.

A practical approach could be to start with a partnership with an existing FB group. Both partners keep their own brand, their own mod team, but agree to work together as much as possible. Further integration is a possibility, could take a couple of years, but not a necessity.

I do have some concern that ScapeCrunch may have a hard time getting enough traffic to secure the platform long term, and I hope this idea could help. Another option would be for multiple fora to join forces, merge, but that seems less likely, or desirable, to happen.

 

[Art]

Thanks and I do appreciate the purpose of this suggestion.

I believe that a forum must keep growing the community for it to be stable long-term. This means delivering value to the community by providing a home for meaningful, thoughtful discourse and education on the main topic. It needs to be a fun place to visit with nice people so that you feel good as part of a broader, global community.

One key aspect to work on the above is making it as easy as possible for prospective community members to find us. Social media is the best distribution network for this. Facebook Groups likely being the best. Therefore, it would be great to partner with a large Facebook Group that was willing. I don't think starting our own would make sense.

The challenge is to find one willing to partner up. The few I spoke to don't see a benefit to them to partner up with us. I disagree because I think ScapeCrunch would provide a long-term benefit to a Facebook Group and be a big differentiator with other Facebook Groups. But, some of the leaders need to see this as well.

If any Facebook Group leaders read this, send me a DM if you want to explore.