Our online community is really vibrant and I always enjoy reading the views and comments expressed. Some of you are very seasoned commentators and your ‘insights’ are invaluable to new and regular visitors alike! It also makes a real difference to our planning process!

As a goal for 2009, I would love to find ways to stimulate further traffic on the board; so would welcome any suggestions you may have that may assist us in that endeavour.

Some of you have already provided valuable feedback and I have included some of your comments below.

I am currently working with our administrators to action as many of the suggestions as we can. In fact some of your suggestions are already in place and we are now looking at ways to further improve these.

I really hope to get this Board moving apace in 2009 so would value your continued participation and comments.

Kind Regards
John Boulding

It is interesting that you bring this up as there has been discusion, off and on, as to why your "sister" company (tt) board is so much more active than this one. Maybe some other regulars can provide some insight (pun intended) as to why that is. The only thing that is evident to me is that their board is much like a chat room with threads moving in all sort of directions and going on forever. And, expectedly, bb'ers have become somewhat close thru the process. Many are members of both boards so maybe we can get some feedback on this question.

quote:

Originally posted by johninwa:
The only thing that is evident to me is that their board is much like a chat room with threads moving in all sort of directions and going on forever.

johninwa,
AND that is the main reason that I don't visit the Trafalgar BB on a regular basis. It has become a chat room.
I'm interested in reading about travel posts. If I want to know what book someone on the BB is reading, I'll send them an email.
If I don't check the Insight BB for a week or so (usually when I'm out of country), at least I know that I don't have to wade through 100's of posts that have nothing to do with Insight tours, which is what happens on the Trafalgar site.
But having said that, it seems that the majority of Trafalgar BBers are happy for that BB to be treated as a chat room AND Trafagar encourage that.

quote:

that is the main reason that I don't visit the Trafalgar BB on a regular basis. It has become a chat room

Agreed!

Posts are taken way off topic by the same small group who seem to have developed their own shorthand.

I drop in but I very seldom post now knowing that it is likely to get lost in the volume of "chats".

Pauline and Tangata, I agree 100%.

I also agree. Alot of the topics have nothing to do with travel, and lately there have been a few political discussions that I'd rather stay out of. I mean, it's supposed to be a travel board, not a soap box to air your presidential likes and dislikes. If ever a president offers to pay for my trips, then I'll get on the board and talk about him.

Hi Guys,

I haven't been on the site for a while now (Hubby has curtailed travel at the moment ). Just to put in my 2cents worth, we had much fabulous travel information from all of you for our Country Roads of France Trip that I would hate to see the BB turn into a chat room.
... now just got to work on that husband of mine....

I have been away from the BB for a few weeks due to being extremely busy at work. New school term just started.

I agree that we need to keep the BB informative. If visitors want to chat then they should go to the chat room. Though in saying this, it is not always possible with the time differences. I have taken a look over at the Trafalgar BB and there is a lot of frivolous chat, mostly not really relevant to the tours or advice for travel. The Insight BB however, is much more informative and helpful to the visitor, and you don't feel like you are butting in on a conversation between two or three individuals as seems evident on Trafalgar.

In regard to developing the Online Community I wonder if longstanding members of the BB might consider pulling out their lists of contact email addresses from people they have toured with in the past and maybe dropping them an email to let them know that you have posted a tour tale or photo albums that they might be interested in reading/viewing. If we all were able to do this, it could possibly generate more visitors to the BB.

quote:

As a goal for 2009, I would love to find ways to stimulate further traffic on the board;

In relation to Bulletin Boards, "traffic" is often defined as the combination of number of visitors to the BB plus the number of page views. That is, how many people (either registered or unregistered) visit the BB each day and whilst there, how many pages they look at.

For this BB, this is mainly a measure of three factors:

1. how effectively is the BB being publicised to Insight's tentative, intending and past travellers,
   
2. whether Insight's tentative, intending and past travellers consider that a BB will be of interest and possibly useful to them, and,
   
3. once people visit the BB, how easy is it to navigate around the BB and how interesting/useful is the information posted there.

The Insight BB currently has approximately 8,100 Registered Members of whom approximately 4,400 (~54%) have never posted a message. (As a comparison, the TT BB currently has approximately 15,400 members of whom approximately 7,100 (46%) have never posted a message.) These membership numbers may well be proportional to the number of travellers on Insight and TT.

However, the number of Registered Members seriously underestimate interest in the BB. At any time of day, there will typically be a handful of members visiting the BB but there will also be of the order of 20-50 other visitors, some of whom may be members who simply haven't bothered to log on.

Another important measure is Member Activity. This is probably best measured by observing the "karma" level of members [see: Member Directory].

On this BB, "Karma" is defined as "....a rating of your performance and reputation in the community. It is normally based on participation in the community, but may be edited by the administrator."

It should be noted that there is a major flaw in this measure because, for example, a 20,000 word tour journal with linked photos will not receive 20,000 times the karma points of a one word post. That is, the "karma" system does not measure the size, "quality" or "usefulness" of posts.

The current membership "status" of Insight BB members is as follows:

• "New member" status (0-9 Karma points): approx. 7,130 members (~88.0%)
  
• "Virtual Traveller" status (10-29 Karma points): approx. 600 members (~7.4%)
  
• "Virtual Traveller Plus" status (30-89 karma points): approx. 255 members (~3.1%)
  
• "Virtual Traveller Elite" status (90 and greater karma points): approx. 116 members (~1.4%)

There are no specific benefits on the Insight BB associated with membership status (Karma points attained). On the TT BB, a number of trivial BB capabilities become available to members at specified karma levels (eg alternate avatars, private messaging, etc.). Personally, I don't even bother to use an avatar and private messaging on the TT BB seems to have aided a number of fights on that BB.

Instead, as an incentive to attain "Virtual Traveller Elite" status, I would suggest an extra "any topic" forum (ie. not strictly travel-related) on the BB that was only accessible by "Virtual Traveller Elite" members. As an alternative, or in addition, there could be a special Chat Room only accessible by "Virtual Traveller Elite" members.

An interesting comparison is the sum of the top 25 posters' karma points on the Insight BB is 20,251 whilst it is 108,040 on the TT BB. This tends to support the view expressed by some other posters earlier in this topic that a number of TT members are rabid posters, using their BB as a "chat" room.

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The above shows that there is a need to increase not just BB traffic but also BB activity.

However, there is another important factor in this process. Assuming that a much larger number of people were made aware of the BB and were pursuaded of its usefulness, it is unlikely that they would be interested in visiting the BB other than at certain specific times. If there is a sequence of usage of this BB, then it would probably be as follows:

1. prior to booking, review experiences of past tour participants to help decide on a tour, checking also on aspects such as the likelihood of tour cancellations, Insight's various discounts, Premium v's Essentials style tours, Discovery v's Regional v's Country Roads v's Easy Pace style tours, etc.
   
2. having decided on and booked a tour, learn about the detailed aspects of coach touring such as optionals, immunisations, visas, clothing styles, washing clothes, seat rotation, meals, things to do pre-and post-tour, role of TDs, weather, daily expenditure, tipping, local currency, credit cards, etc.
   
3. make contact with others who will be travelling on your tour
   
4. post-tour, contact others who were on your tour
   
5. share your tour experiences by contributing a report/journal
   
6. share photos from your tour
   
7. repeat this sequence from point 1, but only when the interest in touring again arises.

Apart from this, some past-travellers, like me, (my wife describes me as a "BB tragic") visit the BB from time-to-time to be part of the collective wisdom of the BB. Others, within Insight's typical demographic may only have a single post-retirement overseas tour.

phil

This message has been edited. Last edited by: phil,

There is another interesting dynamic here. I am an Insight TD and it has been my practice for some years to post a welcome to clients who are booked on tours to which I have been allocated. This welcome includes a link to my own,very basic, web page.My e-mail address is on that site. This in turn has generated a substantial amount of traffic which is,in effect, a "branch" of the Insight website...so there is more going on than might at first appear.