Posted by Regina Mullen on November 14, 2008 at 8:01pm
Thank you, LaShandra for the post about raising the standards for this portal and inviting ideas on how to improve this community.My feeling is that you can change the site yourself, but it's going to take some work. This post took about an hour to write, so know that I'm serious. We need this site to work.So, I have to admit, I don't come around much for three reasons:1) The objective of the site is not clear2) Forums and teleseminars don't make a community site3) Pink and distracting banners do not say "business"Point 1: The objective of the site is not clearWhat is this site about?Forgive me for being preachy, and maybe you know all of this and more, but I'm just wrapping up a course on Project Management, which I highly recommend to EVERYONE using this portal, if they're not experts in it already. And, what I sense is a lack of planning and focus.This was all stuff I learned from my Daddy, an engineer (i.e. professional problem solver), but it never made sense until I had some life experience to prove that he was (almost always) right. That lead me to actually spending the $700 to take a course, to learn how to do it properly to get results. This, in turn, has given me a framework to rapidly retool not just my business, but the code I write for my domains (about 130 of them).So, before you can make a success of anything, you have to PLAN. Not plan to make money, --if you do thing right, the money will come. What I'm talking about is really sitting down over a few weeks and figuring out what this site is supposed to do. Test against the data you already have (log in info, server logs), and figure out where to "change the angle." A few degrees can make all the difference.I have a great resource to suggest to you, and that is Tamra Adlin's The Persona Lifecycle. I was so very fortunate to be able to participate in a session with her while working at Avvo. I learned a lot from them as well, because they assembled an amazing team of specialists to get the job done. Nice to have VC money, I know, but it doesn't take money, so much as it takes the time to sit down and study.The first step is to figure out who you want to serve. What's the "scope" to put it in PM language. "Black Business Women." OK, but WHICH ones?"Sistapreneurs"? Does that scream serious to you? Or, is the idea that you want to build a warm place where we can be comfortable in our skin,--but not get a lot done? If you can, spend the time to read this book and call Tamra,--or someone else, to get a few minutes of support. She's a seriously smart, no nonsense cookie. On the cheap, look for seminars and papers on community building. Well worth several afternoons at Borders!"C-Level"? Well, chances are they got there by being highly disciplined and, somewhat hard-nosed about their business and how they spend their time. Figure out where black women have made good in business, look at their job descriptions and tailor the site accordingly.Now that Barack Obama is our President, the folks I went to school with (and maybe you did to) are going to be coming out of the woodworks. There aren't enough of us who have made it, but there are certainly enough to form a core of advisors.They give all sorts of advice in Black Enterprise. Sure, its conservative and kinda "party-line," but then, business is conservative. The objective is to separate people from their money by giving them something they value more than their money. Simple to think about. Hard to do.Bottom line: if this site is about business, keep all the social stuff to one side and make it about BUSINESS.Point 2: forums/teleseminars do not a "community" makeI think you had a lot of initial interest, but the forums are full of fluff. if the target audience are people needing wigs and buying plastic, then that's the quality of interaction you're going to get. The teleseminars MIGHT have been interesting, but I get the overwhelming feeling that I'm just going to be sold a wig or piece of plastic,--or worse, some pseudo-guru service.Right now, I put time aside in my calendar for only a few webinars, and they are dense highly technical sources of information within my fields of expertise. My interest is in cutting edge,--if not bleeding edge, stuff, so to get my attention, the webinar has to really give me something of value."Social networking" is really about the relationship between pieces of data and how you massage input people are willing to give you to help them make choices.It's hard to do that with an off-the-shelf solution because it lulls you into not thinking about the story you're trying to tell with the site. But, if you want this thing to fly, you really have to show a deeper level of thinking. Or hire someone to do it for you,--because it really is a geeky thing to do.So, one suggestion would be to study, in a transparent way, really strong sites like LinkedIn and FaceBook. Not just from the perspective of how to run a community so that it runs itself, but in order to learn better how each piece of information flows in and out of the system they've created.Point 3: Pink and distracting banners do not say "business"This is admittedly personal, but pink annoys me.When I am in a serious mood and looking for resources and a place to spend my work time, pink just doesn't do it for me. When I am looking for a place to kick back, I sure as heck and not going to go to an eyesore.One suggestion would be to look at the data you already have. See who is here and who has stopped coming. Look into their domain names: are they at ibm.com,--OR are they at hotmail, yahoo or some untraceable offshore domain?For my part, i gave my real company (Legal Data Services, LLC), but the site is under development. What does that tell you? One of two things: either I am a busy entrepreneur OR I am not at all serious. Sometimes, I wonder myself, but I assure you, it's the former.The look and feel of this portal are under your control, so I'd suggest an overhaul that looks at the site objective and where you want it to go. You can feminize the site without all that pink.Second, all those banner ads screaming for the user's attention are a distraction.And not a welcome one.Even as I type this, I want to run away because of all the changing content pulling at my attention. It's not just this site, it's any of them. Pop up ads don't get clicked. Rotating banners are very, very old school and they just don't work.Instead of people paying for banners, why not have them contribute content instead and then you promote the posts with banners of your own? Just an idea to follow up on the one you already suggested.You can't expect to make money from click ads until someone sees them, so I'd suggest building up the site FIRST, then gradually adding in a conservative number of ads, strategically placed to raise the likelihood of the user actually WANTING to click on them.I didn't intend to go on this much, but I wanted to use the time to say something that i hope will be useful, not just to you, but to anyone else hoping to build a web presence.
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