tried to throw some ideas....
We started the Datsun France in 2006 from the basis on a old school club "paper based" : Club Zen
<Website :
Bad news : the golden age of forums is ended.
Now, it is social networks age and mobile internet is 75% of the hits.
If golden age of forum is ended, paper based is definitively dead... even magazines are moving to numeric format & paper version is pericliting.
Paper is huge work, long production cycle, expensive to print & to send, not planet compliant...
OK, do we stop every thing and all go to Facebook?
No I don't think!
Advantage of FB, Twitter etc....
- you get in contact with people you don't know & enlarge your community quicker than with forum.
- ergonomy of software, especially on mobiles is unbeatable
- youngers are daily connected
But :
- the content belongs to FB & they can crash all your buildling in 1sec (i experienced it on Datsun.France Facebook account) => you build on sand!
- the content is not structured and difficult to retrieve so it is "live & forget"... a modern chatbox
- a group or a page is linked to a FB account... you cannot transmit it as a club or a website in the future; if people change or resign, the datamart dies & your dataset goes back to the ground!
- elder are often not connected, some refuse by principle.
- if you think to get advertising revenues, it is not for the club but for FB (For Datsun-France, it is not an issue because we don't want advertising banners or pop-up)
So where are we?
Technology :
- Forums have to evolve with latest technology to support nicely mobiles/iPad devivces.... it is mandatory.
- Forums have to evolve to have a good ergonomy.... users don't accept any longer any contraints in this scope; if not, they quit! Youngers have never known television without telecommand...Zap!
- Forums have to be linked in both directions with social networks
Data mining :
- Forum advantage on social network is definitively the content & the retension (more than 10years of content...)... the search engine & SEO & sitemaps/robot compliance have to be top level.
=> organisation & quality of the content make the difference
=> overflow search engine with urls of your website (propose your urls to search engine & put links of your url on the web)... you win when you are in first page from Google/bing search
=> overflow press with your contents, your activities
-Content? that looks difficult also to retrieve information from a big forum.... There is an activity to extract the very substance as stable articles.
=> That is an activity we started
http://www.datsun-france.com/forum/articles the result is not yet very satisfying as of now... working on it
We need some writers & historians. Content about Datsun in french language is poor, that is an opportunity you don't have here because of massive existing content in US. You could focus on UK specific information?
=> I am currently working on retrieving the content of FB pages & collect it back in our forum... so that, this content is back home & safe, can be reorganised etc...
Social networking :
- If content is for what a visitor arrives to your website, people & relationships are the reason for staying. Respect, well balanced moderation, free help, initialtives etc.. difficult topic, human is not a simple technology
- Forum are probably more focussed visitors & more long term relation than social networking where there are so many groups...rising, dying, new ones...
- Social networks are a great tool to reach people you don't know and who don't know you; It is real opportunity.
- Social networks are also a very good solution to break the distance & direct connect with contacts as journalists for instance
- Important function is membermap... web makes binds between people by affinities & not on a geographical criteria; membermap transforms this benefit on local "real" relationship and traditional friendship => make the group "real" & durable ; at the moment, we have lost this function since forum engine evolution... working on it
=> connect your forum with social media... it is mandatory nowadays
=> with objective of transforming the web link and become real friendship : add a membermap, add a up to date planning of activities
As a summary, your website has to adapt to social networks & even more on social media for mobile devices... or die, takes the benefits of it but pays attention to keep the content & human value inhouse, focus on people.
<Club?
- One club, all cars? For my opinion, no chance...
behavior & expectations of a brand new 370Z or used 350z owner is not the ones of a classic Bluebird lover;
Some are common but 75% are not. Tuned or hybrid 240z or 510 are polymorph & are the exceptions.
Young S13 drift lovers with no money in pocket in the same restaurant than middle aged purists of strictly stock collectors?
Camping for every body? hotel *** for every body? not compliant i think.
=> Betwen Datsun France & Notre350z, We took the path of a common association as a holding to mutualise what can be but clubs and forums running are independants. Some events are shared, some not. Freedom for all.
This flexible structure is capable to host others in the future at no extra cost because capacity of infrastructure is ready.
- Cotisation? I think there is two classes of members : ones want something in return of their money, the others value the appartenance to a group.
=> for the first, the will take their club ticket when they need the discount or private info because repairing the car. This is not a critic; this behavior is respectable & for some, money is really not easy to earn nowadays.
Often, the cotisation is not renewed after the end of the need.
=> for the second, the appartenance to a group is important. They want to contribute & participate to existence of the club. In a good working familly, a parent is happy to spend money for familly...
If people feel in a familly, they agree to pay without claiming for return. This behavior exists mainly thanks to real life meetings and not only web experience.
=> if a club behave hard "no membership, no advantage", I think that promotes the first behaviour.
If a club behave as a community, I think that promotes the second mindset. In Datsun France, we bet on openness;
If some take benefit for free, it is not important. We don't need to be rich (it is nearly Tom Jones' song...
)
=> This philosophy is not money efficient & long to achieve... but quality focused. We prefer active members than terrible paying members
=> You win when the overall opinion of your club is high (awareness, opinion, recommandation...), then the group is working without intervention & effort.
=> How to improve? Club is like a brand... Do you want a telephone or do you want an iPhone? both let you ring your wife when you are late in the pub but you want an €€€ iPhone... why?
brand recognition
=> We have openned comptability online for club members... that closes totally the terrible question that can always bring troubles "what do you do with our money?" That kills in the egg any suspicion.
=> how much do the club need to work? a web site as Datsun-France is around 200€ a year of run costs + around 200€ for a dedicated database server for notre350z (the database is big...) + licenses vbulletin when changing to new version (~300€) ;
So let's say 500€ a year of running costs supposing TLC for free.
This balance is quite easy to achieve and let us be alive without twisting our people centric objective.
There is no free hosting for site with huge SQL database...
or you go to built-in forum provider as forumactive for instance... but you have advertising popups, no easy ability to quit without loosing your data, name suffix is captive... so if you move, your "branding" is obsolete... and when your site becomes big, you are captive and locked.
Did I say that all that is a huge workload?
=> You need a clear delegation & confidence between a few volonteers; when someone cannot any longer or for a time, it is OK... it has to be led by pleasure to last