Website growth options...

[Brandon]

Perusing the new format I noticed something that, at first, puzzled me but then struck me as something that should be addressed. Of the 17 SR/CONFERENCE listed, 5 have the vast majority of the total postings. Looking at some of these divisions it would appear like not a soul following the conferences/teams has any idea that D2FOOTBALL.COM even exists. Given the intensity of the reaction to virtually any social media posting, it seems highly unlikely that the miniscule numbers would exist if schools/conferences/fans knew where they could sound off about their team or more importantly throw some serious shade on their rivals.
Does anyone have any ideas how fans/ schools / conferences can be directly (DM, e-mail, snail mail) contacted to boost participation in the vast wasteland of say the SIAC ??? This has to be of benefit to the site as a whole. I wish I was tech savvy enough to make a difference, but I'm pretty much limited to raising the question. Hope there's an answer.

I think there is obviously room for growth but I don't know if it will occur in certain areas. Like someone posted before, the CIAA and SIAC folks are pretty loyal to black college football and seem to prefer interacting with fans of other HBCU schools. There is also the phenomenon of some people retreating into their own echo chambers where they don't want to hear anything negative about their own team. A lot of them hide in Facebook groups and don't want to hear opinions that differ.

Another problem is that I messed up some settings and it caused some stuff to be pruned. It causes the perception that no one is posting there which becomes a self-fulfilling situation.

I think a lot can be reached on Facebook and other social media. I have done a poor job of it over the last five years because of some health issues but I feel much better now and I am making growing the audience a priority.

[Brandon]

Would be simple enough to email the SID of each school to have them get it out to their fan base, well for those SIDs who do their job well anyways. However, if the attendance at those games is what I expect I don't know that many are going to care enough to spend time here.

There are some good SIDs. There are a lot of bad ones. But I doubt even the good ones care about getting the word out about the site. It is something that will have to come from us/me.

[Brandon]

I would think being one of the recognized polls would draw some traffic?

That's a great way. There is a problem, though, that a lot of the same teams are ranked all the time.

[Brandon]

If you notice for some reason some of the SR2 conferences were still having threads deleted after a month of inactivity up until earlier this year. So for example none of last seasons threads are listed in the CIAA section where as other conferences have threads from 2018. That has greatly skewed the number of threads and posts in comparison to some other conferences.

This is still going on? This was the issue I was mentioning before.

[Brandon]

I think the GLIAC's issue is that GV and Ferris are the dominant teams there in the age of the internet. People tend to not want to show up if their team isn't winning, and in the GLIAC, it has been GV and either Ferris or Ashland or SV since the inception of the site. We've had Ashland fans come by, and they have faded off as their team has. We have SVSU fans come by, but they faded off while Collins was there. GV fans have remained relatively strong, but even they have faded off because the team has underperformed for the last 10 years. I think if there was a way to look at school affiliations for every person on this board, it is heavily correlated with how good those schools have been at football. If your school sucks at football, you're probably not looking for information or conversation with good football schools who crush you.

Good post.

[Brandon]

Maybe so, but look at this year's posts... Not even that many, maybe 1 or 2, Ferris posters? Maybe on off on that, but I don't think there was even one post about this weekend's game other than GV's I'm hearing that Message bds are old school, but twitter or hell even instagram don't seem to fit real well. Guess I'm old school. Maybe having comments on articles is more effective, but then one needs articles. I know the Detroit Lions stories light it up with comments on Mlive or Freep/news, but it's hard to go back to those posts. I'm not ready to move on from this format, but my "numbers" seem to be dwindling.

I'm sure they are old school but Twitter is for the fringes of society and no real discussion takes place in 280 characters. I guess if people just want to fling poo at each other, Twitter is the place for them. But if they want to support their school and make that school's football world a little bigger, they should post here. NFL stories will always have very active posts because it's such a popular sport.

[Brandon]

By the way, there were 150 people on this board right after midnight central time. There were 25 members and 125 lurkers. So a lot of people read but don't post. I would make it so that it would be easier to post and not have to register but I literally delete over 50 would be spam accounts every day that try and slip through.

[CALUPA69]

I'm sure they are old school but Twitter is for the fringes of society and no real discussion takes place in 280 characters.

Those fringes on Twitter include a very high proportion of the athletes that we follow. Actual facts about injuries (coaches hate this), transfers and college commitments happen first on that service. Most fascinating is real time reactions to the ups and downs of college sports life without the filter of SIDs. It actually is pretty easy to disregard the nonsense and concentrate on actual useful information. For those of us fans who get very little info from traditional sources it is nice to have as an option.

[CALUPA69]

By the way, there were 150 people on this board right after midnight central time. There were 25 members and 125 lurkers. So a lot of people read but don't post. I would make it so that it would be easier to post and not have to register but I literally delete over 50 would be spam accounts every day that try and slip through.

Very big THANKS for keeping the site free of the crud of the spamiverse. I know it's a running battle and the job you do is nothing short of amazing.

[GorillaTeacher]

Those fringes on Twitter include a very high proportion of the athletes that we follow. Actual facts about injuries (coaches hate this), transfers and college commitments happen first on that service. Most fascinating is real time reactions to the ups and downs of college sports life without the filter of SIDs. It actually is pretty easy to disregard the nonsense and concentrate on actual useful information. For those of us fans who get very little info from traditional sources it is nice to have as an option.

Tweetdeck is a pretty decent way to help sort. Even though I hate Twitter. Apparently, teacher professional development happens on the platform. I have yet to witness it.

https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/

[Brandon]

Those fringes on Twitter include a very high proportion of the athletes that we follow. Actual facts about injuries (coaches hate this), transfers and college commitments happen first on that service. Most fascinating is real time reactions to the ups and downs of college sports life without the filter of SIDs. It actually is pretty easy to disregard the nonsense and concentrate on actual useful information. For those of us fans who get very little info from traditional sources it is nice to have as an option.

I should have been more clear. I don't consider what you described to be fringes.

[Brandon]

Tweetdeck is a pretty decent way to help sort. Even though I hate Twitter. Apparently, teacher professional development happens on the platform. I have yet to witness it.

https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/

I use tweetdeck to help keep track of things.

[LegalRam]

This is still going on? This was the issue I was mentioning before.

Thanks for what you do to keep this site up. No, the issue seems to have been fixed over on the CIAA side. I was just pointing out that our numbers look low because we don't have the stats from the previous seasons. Offseason is usually slow on the CIAA thread so our numbers should be picking up as this season goes along.

[Brandon]

Very big THANKS for keeping the site free of the crud of the spamiverse. I know it's a running battle and the job you do is nothing short of amazing.

Thank you very much. I know that I have deleted potential posters multiple times when I thought they were spammers. They probably got tired of it and gave up.

[CALUPA69]

Big thanks also for my VULCAN icon. For my life I couldn't get that done by myself