Thank You

[CLA_Staff]

The postings on this forum are great! There's a lot of dialogue and a variety of topics. One problem though. We at CLA would like to see more members using this site. Do you have any suggestions on how we might be able to accomplish this?

[Howard]

Several things could be done. First you might consider breaking the forum into several parts; by topics, and then also a section for non-members. Why non-members - simple, get them interested and then maybe they will join. The other reason for having non-members is that traffic is what makes a forum like this valuable. Get input from more people and it becomes more valuable. Perhaps make it so non-members can only read but not post answers, let them ask questions but not give answers (if possible). The other thing is to advertise more, there has been very little publicity about the forum.

[Marianne]

Could publish an interesting thread in the journal.

[Howard]

The other thing to get traffic up would be to post some threads on Wascomats forum - it is probably the most used one out there right now. Two others include:
http://pluto.beseen.com/boardroom/b/49703/Date

and

http://www.ownersclub4u.com/

[Dave_in_Minnesota]

My recommendation for getting more involvement in this forum is really simple. Advertise it. You have a great (free) opportunity with your monthly publication. You could advertise it as a free service...(it is), or you could do a feature article on it publicizing some of knowledge sharing and what benefits it has had to real people. The last option, is to incentify people to get online... have a sweepstakes online or give them a free trinket... people are suckers for this stuff.

dave.

[petefritz]

make the forum available to everyone. forget being member exclusive

[PeterH]

I like the member-exclusive forum. Maybe it's just me, but I'm tired of the "I'm thinking about opening a laundry" and the "I have equipment to sell" posts over and over and over and over again on the Wasco board. Yeah, you can pick and choose what you read, but I rather like knowing the the people posting here are the truly serious business people who will respond in a member-to-member manner. If the forum is open to everyone, why bother paying dues for the association? This is a great benefit to keep communication open between meeting, conferences and shows.

-ph