Here is a straight up beg for your help.

I have big plans for upgrades to TheBeachcats.com community over the winter and need your support.

First step is to make better use of Social Media and I'm starting with Twitter and Facebook.

If you have an account, please:

Follow TheBeachcats.com on Twitter
https://twitter.com/thebeachcats

Like TheBeachcats.com on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/thebeachcats

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Damon Linkous
1992 Hobie 18
Memphis, TN

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give us something to repost, promote, etc and i am sure many will.

MN3

give us something to repost, promote, etc and i am sure many will.

Thanks! Will do. And thank you to everyone who has liked https://www.facebook.com/thebeachcats 110 new likes since yesterday!

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Damon Linkous
1992 Hobie 18
Memphis, TN

How To Create Your Signature

How To Create Your Own Cool Avatar

How To Display Pictures In The Forums.
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I promote the site to all Canadian Cat sailors I run across.
Maybe I'm to old, to slow, or just a Luddite, but I disregard anything to do with Twit or Face. I would never open an account with an operation that is so loose with privacy/security.
It bugs me to read a story in the National News, that includes 15 tweets. Who gives a shyte what 15 anonymous people can say in 121 characters, about any subject, that they may have zero real knowledge of.
" Yeah, there was lots of cops, & people running & screaming, & like it was all just really freaky & like crazy man."

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Hobie 18 Magnum
Dart 15
Mystere 6.0XL Sold Was a handful solo
Nacra 5.7
Nacra 5.0
Bombardier Invitation (Now officially DEAD)
Various other Dock cluttering WaterCrap
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Edchris177

I promote the site to all Canadian Cat sailors I run across.

Thanks! You do a lot to help this site and promote cat sailing in general.

As far as luddite, that's more me, the term initially described a workers in textile mills that resisted change to powered looms because it might cost them jobs. I build custom websites and do Internet consulting so initially the thought of a company using a Facebook instead of their own website worried me, but now I understand the power it has to spread a brand message.

What you describe comes under the heading "old fart", which applies to me as well.

As far as Facebook and Twitter, they are simply ubiquitous in today's world and sites like this one can become completely irrelevant without a presence. I was convinced when I started seeing multi-million dollar SuperBowl ad campaigns that featured a Facebook or Twitter link Facebook.com/Budweiser without ever mentioning the companies own website. Todays's consumers are simply more likely to initially visit a Facebook page than a tradional URL website, especially one that is reccomended (liked) by a friend.

The main point for TheBeachcats.com is that the mission is to promote beachcat sailing, and short of national TV advertisements the widest reach to non-sailors is through social media.

So everyone keep liking the hell out of https://www.facebook.com/thebeachcats and then invite all your sailing and non-sailing friends to like it as well!

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Damon Linkous
1992 Hobie 18
Memphis, TN

How To Create Your Signature

How To Create Your Own Cool Avatar

How To Display Pictures In The Forums.
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Quote

As far as Facebook and Twitter, they are simply ubiquitous

not only are they fb/tw everywhere (and soon to be google+), having people "like, share, and retweet" are more and more important in search engine results


i don't follow this site's ranking but 90% of the rest of the world has had real ranking shakeups in the wacky world of google in the past 2-3 years ...



Edited by MN3 on Sep 25, 2014 - 07:34 AM.

MN3

not only are they fb/tw everywhere (and soon to be google+), having people "like, share, and retweet" are more and more important in search engine results

i don't follow this site's ranking but 90% of the rest of the world has had real ranking shakeups in the wacky world of google in the past 2-3 years ...

Very true. Google heavily indexes TheBeachcats.com's new content right after it is published here. But while Google does treat TheBeachcats.com as an "authority site" in it's rankings, overall traffic is flat this year for the first time since the launch in 2002.

I attribute that to several factors. First, the site is long overdue for a makeover to modernize the design and bring it up to current coding standards.

The main problem, besides a dated look, is that the site structure was created when 98% of visits were from desktop computers. For this site the ytd for % desktop use is down to less than 70%. This happened suddenly, just two years ago for the same period desktop use was 85% and three years ago 92%.

While this site can still be viewed on a good tablet or smart phone it is not "friendly" to those devices at all, and not all functions of the site are operational when used outside a desktop browser.

This site was also created before Facebook took over the Internet and changed the way people expect to be able to interact with a site.

The third major problem affects the first two and that is the fact that, in order to offer the functionality I wanted for this community, this site is actually three different web applications which have been bridged together. That has made moving to a new platform to do a major upgrade a lot more difficult, time consuming, and expensive than if it was a simpler setup.

It has gotten to the point though that TheBeachcats.com must change or die. This is the winter of change.

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Damon Linkous
1992 Hobie 18
Memphis, TN

How To Create Your Signature

How To Create Your Own Cool Avatar

How To Display Pictures In The Forums.
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as a web developer/marketer i feel your pain

I have clients that are paying the SERP price because refuse to upgrade to modern requirements (responsive design, social media that creates interaction, fresh and continuing relevant content, shares/likes/blogs, retweets, etc).

Quote

It has gotten to the point though that TheBeachcats.com must change or die. This is the winter of change.

MN3

as a web developer/marketer i feel your pain

Thanks, when I went full time as a web developer and consultant in 2002 I developed TheBeachcats.com partly as an example of modern web technology. Back then having "interactive" membership features allowing members to upload pictures, post calendar events, classifieds, and comments was "Web 2.0" and cutting edge. It made a great example to show potential clients.

Now I'm going to push it to again be an example I can be proud of.

Most members don't realize that TheBeachcats.com operation consists of.... me. And since it is not a money making operation I can only afford to spend so much time on it instead of working on clients sites.

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Damon Linkous
1992 Hobie 18
Memphis, TN

How To Create Your Signature

How To Create Your Own Cool Avatar

How To Display Pictures In The Forums.
--

I personally have neither Facebook nor Twitter, I did open a FB account once but quickly realized that I did not have the time required to spend socializing on electronic media, nor do I have the desire to do so. Those who do have the time are mainly students and white collar workers who sit in front of a PED (personal electronic device) all day. I have a smart(?) phone but only use it to conduct business, check the web occasionally or find an address on google maps....

We sure can and will. I share a related experience, if it's of any help.

telemarktips.com was a very popular site related to telemark skiing, with a forum too. Telemark, for those who don't know, is a ski discipline, still in development and not really mainstream but more like a tribal thing. The forum was very active and the site creator was quite active too bringing contents: gear reviews, technology trends, interviews, etc.. He was not very active on the forum discussions, it was really the community that was in front of it (and I believe he respected that a lot), but a portion of the discussions turned around the contents and frecuent updates on the site, so somehow he was there anyway.

Then for reasons that I'm not much aware (personal reasons I think), he gradually stopped feeding the site with content. And the forum decayed too, in quality and quantity of discussion, and finally closed. Years later, after still trying to find traces of these good all days, I realized that the forum was brought back to life (telemarktalk.com), apparently by one of the former members (don't know much of the story), so I registered and started following again. But not a lot happens, except for the efforts of it's re-creator and a reduced number of members.

Bottom line: I think it's the dynamics of contents of the website what really feeds everything. Apparently that requires a serious deal of effort, it won't just come from the users. That's my personal conclusion as a user, I don't really konw the total extent of what happens behind the monitor...

Damon - we went this way on a smaller scale with CRAM. Our "forum" is now our FB group (the FB page is more 1-way communication while the group has lots of interaction). We went from a couple forum posts/yr to sometimes more than 20+/week. There is so much more Q&A, pics, videos, comments, smack-talk, etc. And were seeing the benefit at the starting line. I can name probably 1/2 dozen people this year that wouldn't have been sailing on a regular basis without this kind of connection and encouragement.

Yes, there are a few people that don't do FB, and they miss out a bit. But they were never going to do much online interaction anyway, so its not much of loss. The future is with the 20-30yr olds now, and we've got to engage with them at their level.

However, I still think there is a place in the world for organized forums where content is organized and searchable.

Best of luck - Outside of your original request which I'll do in about 30sec, let us know if there is any other way we can help.

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Jeff R
'88 H18 "Jolly Mon"
'10 C2 USA1193
NE IN / SE MI
cramsailing.com
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