I popped over to the post office to mail off a free CaddyInfo.com Hat and a few site postcards & magnet to one of our new CaddyInfo Forum Community Members, CarlaValentine.
CarlaValentine
Carla was the first recipient of our new CaddyInfo New Member Who’s Doing it Right Award.
On Forums the majority of our audience — Cadillac fans who came to the site to read about Cadillac Automobiles — never register or log in to the site. They ‘Lurk’ as Guests, read the site, but don’t comment or post. This is not unique at the CaddyInfo Community. At most forums in the membership listing you can observe 70-80% guests and 20% registered users online.
Guests are always welcome at CaddyInfo of course, but the strength of our Cadillac Community is the shared knowledge and experience of all of our participants. So the more people who come into the light of Registered Member and out of the darkness of Lurking, the better our conversation is.
One of the points to having the “New Member Who’s Doing it Right” Award is to recognize Carla’s participation.
Caddyinfo.com New Member Who’s Doing It Right is a new concept intended to recognize relatively new arrivals to our CaddyInfo Cadillac Community who are fitting right in, participating, posting new threads or ongoing posts to topics. Carla also filled in her profile correctly, with Avatar image, car details, personal photo, and personal info that help members understand her questions or comments in context.
The award also helps to communicate to new Readers (or experienced Lurkers) that Caddyinfo is a new-participant friendly environment. Pretty much the only things to avoid are open, hostile attitude toward Cadillac Automobiles (them’s fightin’ words), an
d advertising without a relationship with the Caddyinfo Forum (PM me on the Forum about advertising). Otherwise I find that our Membership is very tolerant of almost any style of discussion about Cadillac automobiles.
My Lovely Wife suggested that we have a De-Lurker Award — as a way to recognize people who have Registered and begun to participate. That might be slightly different from our Doing it Right award. Do you have any other suggestions on how to encourage Cadillac owners to participate at CaddyInfo?