How can we make more nutritious soup for more people?

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I have noticed a lot more activity on the FB groups lately. Given that it is a lot harder to follow a conversation on FB threads, I am a bit surprised that we haven’t had an increase here as well. Any idea how we could bring that traffic here?

One thing this forum offers is a memory and a good search engine. It’s upsetting that the valuable contributions from several people get lost in the endless thread there. Although it is possible to search in FB it is not very performant...

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Creating a „fmsoup“ Facebook group could bring some more traffic. I wonder how Brian Dunning is doing. It seems that every new custom function gets posted on FB.

FB for me covers also other interests than FileMaker. It‘s more like a side effect when I catch up some FM topics on Facebook.

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I'm pretty sure the CFs getting posted on FB are a bot reading an RSS feed.

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How people use Facebook for group’s mystifies me - every time I need to find a discussion I struggle as the algorithms appear to show what they think I want to see in what they think is a suitable order.

So annoying.

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Read all about Facebook (and why to AVOID IT) in non-fiction book, "Future Crime", by Marc Goodman. (The scariest tech book I've ever read.)

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I fired Facebook after the Cambridge Analytica breach ..
don’t understand why anyone still on there ..

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You know how it goes: i’m there cuz my friends are there and they are there because I am. Unfortunately I have friends all over the planet and it’s the lowest common technological denominator

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The original thread was titled "Quietness contrasts with FB buzz"

I'm not a FB fan, but here is my attempt to answer @Cecile's question:

Note: each group may have their own policy on what material can be posted, more so when external links are shared

  1. If the FB discussion overlaps with something documented on fmSoup, share a link and say something as you share the link "You may find this useful / Someone has a solution for this here / So&So makes good points on the same topic on fmSoup / ..."
  2. If you see a question is not getting answers, you can invite the person on FB to ask his question on fmSoup additionally, adding you got great feedback from the folks there.
  3. You can start discussions about topics that were already covered here on FB, let the discussion carry on and before it dies out, give a link to a specific Topic OR (can be even better sometimes) to a specific comment in a discussion from fmSoup (provoking scenario 1 above).
  4. You can point people to information that is on fmSoup with something like "have you heard about XYZ, you can read more about it <link>" ("you can read more about what So&So says" can be a good alternative if the content is from someone that has good standing on that topic or about FM in general)
  5. You can ask them what they think about content from fmSoup, pointing to it and expecting them to keep the discussion in FB (They still have to consult the original content to fully know what you are talking about, the assumption is they just don't know about fmSoup and can be won over, not that they know about fmSoup and prefer to exchange on FB as those users would be harder to win over)

There must be other things that can be done I'm sure. Everything comes down to 2 things:

  • Content is king
  • People hang out where their friends hang out (as @Cecile already pointed out)

All this assumes the person involved is already somewhat active in that given FB group. It would just feel plain weird if an outsider was starting to drop a bunch of external links to other groups/communities and is likely to get caught on easily and early on, with the added possible effect of having someone banned from that group and giving a bad name to fmSoup.
Basically, I would say you can do so if you feel like it and it contributes the FB group in an authentic way. After all, a good number of us got here after someone else posted a link on another platform (see: How we first met). Any hidden agenda will not stay hidden for long. Just the same way, we would not like someone to divert our traffic/members to another platform. "Don't do unto others what you don't want done unto you."

@EfficientBizz, I feel like creating an fmSoup FB group would be redundant and may end up diluting the content in 2 platforms.

Also, I would like to add, that a good number of us got here from our disappointment resulting from the switch from Jive to Salesforce. Since then, I would expect things to have crystallized a bit, meaning aside from people who do not have awareness of the multiple options they have, I expect people to be happy with the current state of things, so getting to change their habits can be harder.

The upcoming 1-year anniversary of fmSoup sounds like a good opportunity to loudly share on social media how our favored hang-out spot for everything FM related is now a strong community with amazing content. The nice features are added bonus. LinkedIn and Twitter are my favorite channels for something like this. Here are some of my old posts if you are looking for inspiration.

Once Claris posts official info about Engage (How it will be virtualized, when it will take place, what the content will be, what will the price be, ...) I would like to make a poll and post it to social media like I did in the past. The upcoming release can yield itself to something similar.

Finally, if you have not personally shared an invite link, what are you waiting for?

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Perhaps on LikedIn groups, there are two: FileMaker and FileMaker Pro Developers !

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Please do not use FB for our discussions. I do not want to have a FB account.
Thanks

Louis

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Same for LinkedIn: The aim should be to direct people to the fmsoup.

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No worries Louis! We’re not going anywhere :relaxed:

In the past I have copied here some very interesting elements that had popped up in a FB thread, asking the op’s permission. In one instance, the permission was denied. The person pointed out that they participated in the FB group because it is a private group and didn’t want to have their content on a public forum.

The soup is public. In the past I was asked by members to relax even more the conditions to participate on some forums. We never had to regret that decision.

Nevertheless, I wish I could know the percentage of people who won’t participate in public forums.

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happy to hear that! Like Louis, I'm happy to have no FB account

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I love the idea that FB group is private :grinning:

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Private... lol

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As in privacy ..

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To bring more "meat to the soup" you have to do SEO!
the.fmsoup still doesn't rank at all when you google "Filemaker Forum".

SEO isn't that hard. Here's a list of what to do:

  • Use "FileMaker Forum" (and similar Keywords) in the sitetile.
  • Use "FileMaker Forum" in some headlines.
  • Use "FileMaker Forum" in some texts.
  • Use "FileMaker Forum" in some image names
  • Use "FileMaker Forum" in the alt-tags of these images.
  • Use "FileMaker Forum" in some URLs, like e.g. "the.fmsoup.org/filemaker-forum/rules"
  • Build backlinks from relevant Pages, e.g. by posting in other forums, FB, etc.

And then be patient!

All of this can be made within half a day.

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So I'm going to break out the old consultant's hat here.

Before trying to get more people to join the 'Soup, we should take some time to understand some of the underlying motivations for its existence in the first place.

Starting with what is fmSoup's raison d'etre?

  • Why was fmSoup created?
  • What was it you were not getting in the other myriad FM "fora"?
  • Does this community have a mission? (I probably should know the answer to this.)
  • What differentiates it from other FM Communities?
  • Who were you hoping to attract to / keep away from fmSoup?

For the rest of us,

I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member. -Groucho Marx

  • Who is the ideal member of this community (i.e. what characteristics)?
  • What are bad characteristics?
  • You have limited time, why do you stay with fmSoup?
  • Why is this a better, more compelling place than other communities?
  • What other communities do you participate in, and how much relative time do you spend there?

I think that getting some answers to the above will provide a better basis for trying to expand membership, and even inform how much membership should be expanded, and to whom.

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If I could be so bold. I 'think' (from my perspective), that fmsoup started when I had discovered that the official FileMaker Community Forum had changed format to Salesforce and it was NOT a good experience. On one of the posts I published in that forum regarding how poor that change was, I was commenting about "why didn't FileMaker use Discourse.org, it is an absolutely AWESOME forum experience?!". Well, @Cecile saw that post, asked some questions and then just revealed to me in spectacular fashion that SHE IS A FORCE OF NATURE! And she built everything to where it is today, I'm sure with lots of help along the way, but still... Cecile is an impressive force, at least to me!

Anyway, that's my story to contribute. :slight_smile:

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I agree totally with your comment.

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