A friend just mentioned that we could use FB events to help promote
things I wouldnt want to do it too often on my personal page
But folks could post their classes for one thing
What does “successful” mean? 
(I assume “successful” means “frequently added a new member”. Does it?)
The problem with “sessions”, “users”, and “page views” is that bots and spiders are included. They’re helpful when compared to other points in time (after a site has been online a few weeks) but not particularly useful as absolute numbers.
High referral count. Those are visits from something that (probably) followed a link which, in my experience, are mostly humans (as apposed to bots / spiders).
Lots of referrals results in a higher Google search rank.
I found it useful to occasionally visit referring sites. It can be enlightening to see what others are saying about us. It can also be a source of keywords to add to our own site.
High organic search count is good. Those are followed links from a Google search. Sifting through the keywords is very useful. I suspect those keywords will sometimes give us an idea of what tools / classes should be added. For example, if 387 people searched for “3d print aluminum” then visited our site we may want to consider acquiring a really expensive 3D printer. Any keywords included in a search but not included on our home page / blog need to be added.
Referral from a very high volume site. I think it was a Hackaday mention that increased traffic by multiple orders of magnitude on one of my sites. The single mention permanently increased traffic. I assume that mention was also included in Google search results basically more than doubling the chance of someone making it to my site.
In other words, we need other makerspaces to link to ours. We need sites of interest to makers to link to our site (e.g. ask Dakota Premium Hardwoods to link to us). (With reciprocity.) Mouser seems like a great candidate. They sponsored equipment. They should have a link to us (“Want to play with some cool Mouser equipment? Try it out at DMS!”) We should have a link to them (“Those great folks at Mouser donated some really awesome equipment! Join DMS to try it out!”)
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You understand it a lot better than I do
I know that is important in Etsy, I was working o those
Are you willing to advise us or help us out on this aspect of outreach
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I am willing to try. It has been … uh … let’s call it “more than a year” since I last dug through Google Analytics. It is within the realm of possibility that everything still in my brain just got dumped into that post above. But, it is also possible that more will come back to me.
Who has access to the analytics? Just @jast?
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What you see posted above is all I have as far as I know, and as far as I know, everyone has access to that by logging in to the blog (anyone with an active directory account on DMS.LOCAL can so do). I am hopeful someone somewhere has better data, and for more of our pages, than what I see there.
I don’t disagree with you here, except I think the bigger target is people who don’t know they’re interested in “maker”. This goes back to how social media, in my opinion, is limited in that people tend to enclose their circles, rather than expand their horizons in those venues. As much as it pains me to say it, YouTube is probably the leading technology from my experience to lead you to things you didn’t know you were interested in, but check out anyway (hence, “YouTube Hell”). I think that’s where I would focus of I were hired for this, but isn’t where I possess any talent usable in this situation.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there, and Mouser is a great example of neither party getting as much from the relationship as it seems we could. I have no idea if we were mentioned at any of their outlets. They got a nice writeup in our blog, but I don’t know if it went anywhere else…
I would like to hear from some old-timers, like @Robert_Davidson, who says (paraphrasing) “we can turn the advertising spikot back on anytime and we’ll be overrun with new members again” what data are used to back this idea. I’m thinking we have better than the analytics summary on WordPress. @StanSimmons is another person I expect might have access and insight. And I can think of one more specific person I would like to hear thoughts about SEO from, and that’s @HankCowdog, of he’s willing. I always enjoy his perspective on this place and how it fits into the world.
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Hootsuite, anyone?
@Diplomat
I should think, if the expansion happens, and we want to fire up a PR machine, something like this would be a fine idea.
Plans are tiered, and aren’t overly expensive for this organization
and it appears to handle many of the most-discussed outlets…
On a slightly different note:
The one site which seems to dominate Google searches for images is Pinterest. Nobody’s mentioned it, but I’ve begun appending “-Pinterest” to searches where I don’t want to deal with its crap (frequently)… What’re other’s opinions of it, and how it might be suitable for driving traffic to DMS?
(Thank you, Discourse. I am aware that I’ve posted several times in a row, and expect to shut up in the very near future and let others get a word in edge-wise. Thank you.)
I was ready to decry using the Internet to ask people how often people use the Internet, but I’ll be damned! They used phones to do this survey.
This negates my primary concern with it, but I have to confess I put little faith in surveys these days. I vaguely understand the “reliability of surveys” ideas and maths, but I have never felt like they were sound. As life has progressed, I’ve put even less faith in surveys being representative for a variety of reasons (survey biases, venue biases, people are liars and like to be part of the popular kid’s table, etc.) and question these results on that basis. However, I’ll acquiesce since this is largely “feeling” opinions more so than factual bases. So Facebook it is. Nobody gets information about the world beyond their couch anywhere else. Even bassackward land-line hangers-on. Or soon will so be… Sigh.
Personally, I would suggest staying away from twitter. As @Julie-Harris states it is mostly bot and negative interaction. In my experience using platforms like this just opens you up to a lot of negative and with volunteers negative tends to lead to loss of interest.
That said, when promoting a group, Facebook has proven to be very positive. Most people don’t post out right negative comments when their real name and friends can see it. Of course their are the outliers, but you have to deal with far fewer on the facebook platform. Another large plus to the Facebook platforms is the ability to leverage our community to increase our outreach. Facebook is constantly changing their delivery algorithms, they recently have been increasing the reach of community supported posts over paid posts. So this again supports our use of the platform.
In Facebook I’ve found that Videos, even very short videos less 6 seconds long tend to do the best for natural viral spreading. The key is that you have to upload the video directly to facebook, you can’t upload it to another platform and expect the same response when cross posting. This is because only videos directly uploaded to facebook auto play when people scroll by, linked video has to be clicked to play. In my posts, I’ve noticed that even boring videos can get much higher reactions than pretty spectacular photos.
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Dallas Makerspace Creative Arts:
Dallas Makerspace Fiberholics:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/144658009230804/
Dallas Makerspace Sew and Sews:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1249530565078847/
Cosplay Makerspace Dallas:
World Wide Web:
Instagram: DMSCreativeArt
Twitter: DMSCreativeArt
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When you post something on Instagram there’s an option to have it appear on a linked FB & Twitter.
I had missed the sewing group!
Pinterest is another good place which I know about sue to look at, but cant
really use well myself
Our blog has far more pictures and far less text than the typical blog. IMO, this is a good thing. But it doesn’t take long for people to just scan the photos … that might account for the short time per page.
Once we decide to increase our membership recruitment, maybe we could occasionally feature a shop in the blog … or a new tool in a shop …
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This is a good list. I’m sure there are others.
Do we have one place where we can list all of the social media sites we use?
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As far as I can tell the home page and the blog have the necessary JavaScript to support the “full featured Google Analytics”. (The query tool is here: https://analytics.google.com/) Google Analytics is bound to a Google Account (Gmail address). I suspect whoever originally set it up (@bscharff?) can help.
With the query tool you get fun things like this…
That’s actually how I learned there is country name “Belarus”.
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Here is one effort.
I have not checked it for being current.
https://dallasmakerspace.org/wiki/Social_Media_Outlets
How often is something posted on the blog?
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I also have a twitter @DMS_Shenanigans for the makermeetups I don’t use it on the regular but it’s been fun to meet and talk with other maker places.
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Not very.
I like to transcribe the Show & Tell over to there, roughly monthly, but have no time @ present.
It NEEDS someone who is capable and able to do some “stories”; classes that make regularly, rooms and their tools, maker spotlights, etc. This has been done in the past, but folks get burnt out, as these things take up a lot of time, seem thankless (including no actual return on the investment in terms of new members), etc. (like everything: need the right volunteer).
I am neither of those things, but have moderate aptitude for SOME facets, and would love to help if I could…
It sounds like we need a PR sub committee to take charge of social mdia
Y all don t want me writing, my grammar and spelling suck and that was when I could see the keyboard r
I would need an editor
I wonder if we developed a template for teachers to write about heir classes if that would encourage them
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That and comments from attendees.
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