JNS Facebook page

[cteno4]

Why is the FB page a closed one?

jeff

[Shashinka]

That's news to me

[cteno4]

ok i guess then the privacy type is for the forum of: Closed: Limited public content. members can see all content. then there is a request membership button at the top... no links for liking the fb group, etc. think we would want folks to link to their fb accounts with likes easily.

also we may want to put train in the title as we dont come up in japan trains search just japan rail.

just thinking we were talking about the fb page mainly being for marketing so making things as open and inviting as possible will probably get us more eyeballs, likes and links.

we probably should give a better description/purpose as well.

cheers

jeff

[keitaro]

hmm couldn't find page i did find some japanese girsl page who knows english and job occupation shows jr rail conductor ..... perhaps we should invite ahah

[The_Ghan]

Not wanting to poo-poo the FB idea but it isn't something I would use.  My wife set up a FB page for me and it is out of control.  I get links to so many peoples photos, messages, games and other junk.  I now only use it 5 minutes per fortnight.  I'm sure there are others here who would benefit though, for me, the structure and organisation of this forum suits best.

Cheers

The_Ghan

[Shashinka]

ok i guess then the privacy type is for the forum of: Closed: Limited public content. members can see all content. then there is a request membership button at the top... no links for liking the fb group, etc. think we would want folks to link to their fb accounts with likes easily.

also we may want to put train in the title as we dont come up in japan trains search just japan rail.

just thinking we were talking about the fb page mainly being for marketing so making things as open and inviting as possible will probably get us more eyeballs, likes and links.

we probably should give a better description/purpose as well.

cheers

jeff

What makes it more complicated is FB recently changed the way groups are handled. I do not like the new group format, which went from being forum derriere to more of a Yahoo group format.

[Lawrence]

Actually had 2 new members this week, I have been posting some random JNSwiki links on there though not much else has been put up.  I think this forum is too good 

It costs nothing to run it and it has a link to here on it so will see how it goes

[cteno4]

while im not a facebooker at all, i do see it good to have some sort of a presence there to catch the odd person that might be a big time facebooker but perhaps interested in japanese trains, then use the face book to bring them to the site. to this end i figured doing the open group and really not putting up a lot of content on the fb page. we could just slowly add a few pictures and such to pique interest some (ie put the coolest looking trains up there) and provide maybe once a week a snipet of some interesting thread on the forum.

i think the trick is to keep the fb page as open as possible and dont make it look like some active fb group, but as a nice flashing add for the forum on fb and drive folks over to the forum for all the meat.

this is tricky as you need to only provide so much on the fb page and then you do need to keep adding small announcements there once and a while to keep it looking fresh and some one who is more of an avid facebooker does need to be willing to reply to comments and act as a shill to bring interested looking newcomers over to the forum. what might work best is if we had 3 or 4 avid facebooker forum members that would be willing to do some low level of chatter on the fb page and bring in some pictures and references to forum threads to help show interested folks how active the forum is and such a nice place. the most successful fb attempts by clients have been ones that have been run by very avid facebookers, but even then very few have had much to show as far as real tangible results when the are successful in getting a lot of fb eyeballs.

fb is a horrid interface for us to really do any discussion or real content presentation on, really is designed for basically wild party conversation mode... but it has a lot of eyeballs and perhaps we could capture some...

one of the signups this week was me with my fb alter ego account that i use to manage some fb stuff for clients...

cheers

jeff

[Lawrence]

I am guessing you are not the young lady that has just joined then Jeff 

Yes boys, we appear to have a lady member on the facebook page, now don't all rush, form an orderly queue 

Jeff feel free to add what you like to the page

[keitaro]

maybe it's locked up so the wife can't see unknown purchases :p

anyway Lawrence i signed up emailed the email to ya

[Shashinka]

Well, Facebook is worth over 50b dollars now, and it's IPO is expected to smash Google's when it is made sometime this summer. So, people can say what they will about it, it's on track to smash Amazon this year, and its guns are clearly on Google who look themselves to be under investigation by the SEC for violation of US anti-trust laws.

[cteno4]

I am guessing you are not the young lady that has just joined then Jeff 

Yes boys, we appear to have a lady member on the facebook page, now don't all rush, form an orderly queue 

Jeff feel free to add what you like to the page

LOL! how do you know my fb alter ego is not a girl!?

well maybe a girl on fb will get more on the fb membership from the forum!

ill see if i can work on some text for the page and ideas of what i we might use for the photo album. perhaps grant might volunteer a few photos for the fb gallery. i do think that fb claims right to use any uploaded photos though (just like youtube does) so that may be a consideration to take into count for anyone volunteering some train shots to liven the page up some.

any reason the site is in the have to have approved membership to join instead of just open joining?

cheers

jeff

[cteno4]

Well, Facebook is worth over 50b dollars now, and it's IPO is expected to smash Google's when it is made sometime this summer. So, people can say what they will about it, it's on track to smash Amazon this year, and its guns are clearly on Google who look themselves to be under investigation by the SEC for violation of US anti-trust laws.

yeah but i dont think fb has the base to do much of anything worthwile with all that $$. with all the brains google has they tend to dont go a class job of many things they play with, but they have been smart enough to make money on their position and have good future strategies. fb is much more in the fad department and may end up being passe in a few years and could sink their whole boat and have to just start buying things with all their cash to find something to regroup around.

while they have tapped into something very humanly basic, its got some bad aspects of the human spirit mixed in and that might not always work out, but greed always does...

like you say, like it or not, its the 8000lb gorilla in the corner.

cheers

jeff

[cteno4]

ha, somehow fb finally caught my nom de plume of buckaroo bonzai on fb finally and suspended my account! the account was created only to manage some odd little accounts may just walk away now as really no use for fb now...

wonder if it was signing up for the jns group as i have not done a specific join like that for a group that requires submission to join... perhaps it was on one of the buckaroo fans that kept wanting to friend me!

oh well it was an experiment to see if they would ever catch it.

cheers

jeff

[keitaro]

lol my freind had his name as screaminseamendemon for a while then fb sent him a polite email warning to change it.

he did it also to see how long it would last turns out 4 months

[cteno4]

ive been on for like 4 years now as buckaroo banzai.

at first i was not linked to anyone it was just to manage some clients fb groups.

it was also on a burner email account so i could just ditch the whole thing if it started spam, etc. then they asked for a second email address for security reasons so i in a stupid late night move sent them one of my main email addresses for this. well they used that email to publish to all members to search and everyone that i knew that was on fb started friending me... ahhh outed!

luckily i no longer manage the clients fb pages when we found fb fans that would do that work...

oh well no loss and good to be rid of fb now!

cheers

jeff

[Lawrence]

I have now made the facebook page an 'open' one, so there is no need to apply to join now.  If it does get picked up by one of these spammer worms I will close it down again.

I trust this meets with approval

[cteno4]

Lawrence,

cool, lets see if that draws more eyeballs in. the few clients that were doing fb stuff on a small scale have hot had issues with spammers or even bad wall posts much at all. a couple of yahoo kids a couple of years ago, but they were reported, dealt with and posts removed. it will be interesting with the growth of fb if they can keep policing it though, its probably the #1 target out there for those elements that want to just be nasty or try and grab info or eyeballs for not good purposes...

ill think if i can come up with some more content for the page. i am, though, debating not getting back into fb after getting tossed! nice to be free of it. if i do go back this time my cover will be deep and not blown!

anyone want to donate a few interesting pictures of japanese trains to get something up there for visuals? ill email you a few lawrence to get things started, they are not wonderful and maybe will throw the gauntlet down to others to best them!

cheers

jeff

[Lawrence]

All sounds good to me Jeff 

[Shashinka]

And it's closed.

[cteno4]

you mean the facebook page is closed? why? surely cant hurt to have the simple page up there with the basic info about the list and the link.

jeff

[linkey]

There is a JNS Forums Facebook page 

[keitaro]

there is i am on the jns page hmm i havn't been on face book in a week will check when i get home.

[Shashinka]

I got an email a few days ago saying that it was closed becasue the owner does not have time for it anymore, and is focusing his attention on another forum in the UK)

[cteno4]

hmm i guess that was lawrence.

we should at least open one up for the little description a few photos and a link to the forum. cant hurt. just turn off the comments so we dont get wall posts we would need to deal with.

i would volunteer to do this but i got booted off facebook after like 4 or 5 years for using Buckaroo Bonzai as my name... (it was the early days and i just did not want to give them all the personal info and just needed to manage some backend content for some clients). actually nice to be off it now! i got outed a while back --when they ask you for a second security email address beware they will publish it! -- and got creamed with crap. i think i was actually turned in by some high school classmates (not even friends of mine ever) who kept bombarding with causes which i would not join.

cheers

jeff

[keitaro]

i will open one tonight i have plenty of time to update it !!

[Shashinka]

Cool, thx Keitaro. I'd volunteer, but I'm not on FB much these days as I spend most of my time on LinkedIn

[Dani]

What about Google+???

[keitaro]

http://www.facebook.com/pages/JNS-Japanese-Modelling-and-Railway-Enthusiasts/118717184889213

created a basic page for now.

Hope you don't mind me using the forum logo.

I was thinking I might kick off with changing the pic weekly or so with a loco.

Please join up and say hi.

[Kumo]

Great!
A nice and simple Facebook page directly related to the forum!

[cteno4]

Keitaro,

thanks for doing this, cant hurt to troll facebook. are you going to monitor our wall to make sure there is nothing offensive posted and also answer questions? if not then we should turn off the wall. folks get frustrated if they ask a question and no one from the org responds and sites that dont monitor an open wall become graffiti spots...

dani,

are you on google plus yet? if so perhaps investigate what jns exposure we could have there and what work it would take.

cheers

jeff

[keitaro]

i can check it frequently thats fine about replying to questions i may direct them to join our forum 

[keitaro]

So I have started it and decided that once or twice a week I will post up latest big hit articles or well discussed articles.

I started today by posting a new to dcc automation and linked in Martijn's dcc part 1 - 3 and setssu hokkaido short line video from NB.

I provide the link and basic description to get people onto the forum.

If you have any recomended posts to put up PM me or any pictures you'd like to post for the wall let me know or join and post em yourself

 

[Kumo]

A link in the header of the forum would be neat too! :-)

I don't know if any of you have railfans on your facebook friends but a button "share on facebook(twitter, G+, etc ?!)" could be interesting.

[cteno4]

i dont think we necessarily want to drive folks to the facebook page from the forum, its more of trolling facebook for folks that might be interested in joining the forum.

for us all the action happens w/in the forum so its more of just getting the word out, like placing ads around for folks to come over and check it out. we are not going to start having any activity on facebook with jns stuff outside of a description and the few current examples of forum threads.

keitaro, offer to post a teaser or two a week to interesting threads is great as it will help show folks the interesting chatter going on over here and keeping that live helps show that this is not dead (the problem with static facebook org pages).

on facebook you can send your facebook friend the facebook page for them to check it out and perhaps get interested. outside of face book (even inside facebook) the best way to tell your friends is to just draft up a nice little paragraph talking about jns and then drop that in correspondences with train friend to tell them about the forum and see if they might bite. much more personal and better way than sending them to facebook to see an ad to then come to the forum. your direct correspondence is the best ad jns can get!

cheers

jeff

[Kumo]

I think that if we have a Facebook page we should tell the visitors an obvious manner. It's also a way to join the community. Facebook will also allow a more direct way to communicate between members.
If the Facebook page is just here to say "Look, we're on Facebook" or only to try to drag people from Facebook to the forum, I think it's useless.

Last but not least: if someone "likes" the page, this will be posted on his wall and his friends will see it, maybe like themselves and become a member here.
If we have a page and we don't want people to go on if from the site it's a bit silly don't you think?!

Just my opinion here ;-)

[cteno4]

Kumo,

you do have a point that it would be good to let jns members know easily where the facebook page is so they can join and like to help publicize it. we just need to be clear that this is what the facebook like is for, not that we have some sort of other thing going on over on facebook that jns folks need to be really involved with other than marketing jns to newbies.

there are basically two options here for us with facebook.

Option A
basically have our ad page up on facebook so those trolling around can find it or your friends see it thru your liking it. a like is ok (sort of like a static page, it lacks much spark), but is not as good a marketing tool with your friends as a direct pitch to them in your words, with sincerity and mixed with something related to those that would be interested. this is the powerful tool that helps the most to get folks to come over to really take the time to check jns out. businesses are having a great time with high like numbers, but the big emperor has no clothes thing going on is that in many cases those high numbers are not connected with new business, eyeballs, getting folks to actually do anything, etc, they usually just become a boast to their bosses and others. bosses get caught up in the short term, quarter to quarter keep the stock price/numbers high game these days (little thinking about the long game or future value) and are happy getting big numbers but are not questioning the bang for the buck or what those numbers then equate to in terms of anything tangible to the business.

i dont see it as dragging people from facebook to jns as its using facebook to find folks that would be interested in jns as a specific tool. facebook would not do what we do here well at all.

to do good facebook advertising it is better to have a bit of q/a discussion going on and examples of what is going on on jns. probably dont want it to get too out of hand or it becomes a monster to try and maintain well.

having just a static page is pretty useless, but could not hurt to do so, might catch a fish or two...

Option B
start an active facebook group dealing with japanese trains w/in facebook. this would take someone really trying to run a group like this and would not nearly be as robust as what we have here on the jns forum. it might actually end up fracturing the market which would not be good at all. i think the limits of facebook would end up making it a pretty shallow wall feed situation with little deep discussion, lack of much history to research, etc.

do you see another option?

jeff

[keitaro]

i want to use it to

1. bring more mebers to the forum
2. a place for current and non members to socialise in a different way and to share pics of their models etc
3. if i get time perhaps load list of newest pre orders etc.

[Dani]

I joint JNS facebook page, good work!

I was investigating Google+ (I'm on it since last month), but unfortunately it's just possible for personal pages (no company pages or group/fan pages). They are still developing this part and Google advised that all not personal pages will be closed, so we'll have to wait. I'll have an eye on it....  it seems like a really open social network like tweeter (you don't need to be confirming friends) but with all the advantages of facebook sharing photos, videos, ... plus google advantages (collaborative work, automatic update via picassa, integrated with all google products...).

I'll post any news about it.

Regards,

Dani.

[Martijn Meerts]

Dani, don't forget the "advantage" of Google pasting adds all over the place, and gathering information about which sites you visit ;)

[Shashinka]

I'll pass on Google+ The larger Google gets the more I have concerns over that company.

[CaptOblivious]

Dani, don't forget the "advantage" of Google pasting adds all over the place, and gathering information about which sites you visit ;)

Unlike Facebook, right?

I'm all over Google+ myself right now. I would totally support the creation of a JNSForum account there once non-person entity accounts are permitted :D

[Martijn Meerts]

Facebook is almost as bad :)

[Lawrence]

I did shut the facebook page down as there seemed to be little interest following the initial surge, I would occasionally post links to some of the wiki articles and to the forum itself, Toni and 1 or 2 others would post from time to time but there was little other activity on there.

Coupled with modding on ngaugeforum, work (or forthcoming redundancy as I found out yesterday!) and a few other things going on I didn't have the time to regularly update or promote it.

If accepted, I would be happy to join the new group and hope that all the old group members would sign up too.

A quick thanks to those that did participate in the old group and especially to Toni for maintaining his enthusiasm too

Lawrence

[Shashinka]

I did shut the facebook page down as there seemed to be little interest following the initial surge, I would occasionally post links to some of the wiki articles and to the forum itself, Toni and 1 or 2 others would post from time to time but there was little other activity on there.

Coupled with modding on ngaugeforum, work (or forthcoming redundancy as I found out yesterday!) and a few other things going on I didn't have the time to regularly update or promote it.

If accepted, I would be happy to join the new group and hope that all the old group members would sign up too.

A quick thanks to those that did participate in the old group and especially to Toni for maintaining his enthusiasm too

Lawrence

I think the experiment essentially proved why when our past discussions i the admin forum to why we chose not to do a FB page for these forums sooner than the attempt last fall. Still it was worth a try.

[keitaro]

So i will link club news and exhibition info. so if you have club news or exhibition info create a thread and i will post the news link on fb to the thread to get people to join the discussion.

Be sure to include country and location of said club/exhibition in the  thread.

[keitaro]

anyone have photos to they want to post on the wall?

[linkey]

Somehow FB is telling me that I have got too many groups and I can't join in with any other group pages. But I have liked the page so I get some notification of what's happening.

I will see if I can delete some more groups so I can join up. Then I wil lbe able to post some model railway photos of the AJMRG, or I could refer them to the website. But want to do via the JNS FB page.

[keitaro]

i have been unable to update fb as my phone is in repairs.

I usually post stuff from the mobile as i don't use fb at work or much at home.will some time soo do an update though. mihgt post some videos of some of my new models.

[Kumo]

I posted something today.

The hint on Facebook is to "like" posts. If you click "like", people will see "John Smith liked this post on JNS Forum" and it will drag traffic on the page.