Learn Chinese - Forums Newsletter Ideas -

> Learning Chinese > Resources and General Study Issues
Forums Newsletter Ideas
Home New Posts

Login: Pass: Log in or register for standard view and full access.





Page 1 of 4 1 23 > »






roddy -

Back when I first started the forums, I used to run a semi-regular email newsletter. It was
nothing spectacular, just a quick rundown on the most popular / interesting topics that had
appeared since the last email. I stopped running it after a while.

Lately I've been thinking about starting it back up again, and have just purchased some software
to manage it with (downloading as we speak). Basically what I'm planning is:

No more than weekly mailings. Probably fortnightly.
Text only, no HTML
Content will be as it was, a run-down on recent notable topics.
Potentially if there's interest there might be messages from sponsors / other websites.
Edit: Will certainly have the option to opt-in / opt-out

Keen to hear any thoughts on this. I want to reach people who are registered users, but don't have
the time / inclination to follow the site regularly - so appreciate an edited highlights every now
and then. Things I'm curious about are preferred frequency, any preference for text vs html format
(from my point of view text is much easier, and I don't see any need for html), and ideas for
extra content, and indeed anything else.

Roddy



Pleco Software Learn Chinese with our Dictionaries for Palm and Pocket PC.
Learn Chinese in China Learn to speak Chinese 1MonthChinese.com -Mandarin School in China.
Chinese Textbooks Wide range, cheap, varied languages. Also Chinese cartoons, toys, gifts.
Study Chinese in Beijing Affordable Mandarin language courses at BLCU with ChinaUnipath.com.
HNHSoft Dictionary Learn Chinese on Smartphone and PDA with real person's voice.
XueXueXue IQChinese Get beyond the plateau.Take your Mandarin to a new level.
Chinese in Lijiang Short term Chinese study in a beautiful town with a focus on daily life.
MandarinTube Chinese Access to current everyday Chinese language and culture, 24/7.
Learn Chinese Homestay Chinese course, cultural activities & volunteer events in China.
Learn Chinese Online 1-on-1 instant tutoring, diverse courses, native teachers. FREE trial now!
Nihao Chinese Progam Free one-on-one Chinese lesson. Win 5-years of free lessons now!


About Ads (and how to hide them) -- Your message here









venture160 -

I think this is a good idea, maybe a weekly highlight of the top ten forum posts or whatever you
deem to be most interesting. It could get alot of the members we have to come out of the woodwork
and looking around.

I submit my vote!










anonymoose -

My opinion is that it's not a good idea. My mailbox gets filled with enough of this kind of thing
as it is. I never read it, but it's annoying having to dispose of it all the time.

If I'm interested in the forum, then I'll come and visit and read it. If I'm not interested, then
the last thing I want is to be bothered by emails about it anyway.

Sorry. My opinion.










ironfrost -

From a personal point of view, it's annoying to get automated emails I didn't specifically sign up
for, even if it's from a forum I'm a member of. It would probably be best to make it an opt-in
choice and let users tick some box on the options screen, rather than adding all members to a
mailing list en masse.










trevelyan -

Roddy --> I trust your judgment as long the email is (1) hand-written and (2) opt-out. Please
don't set up something that simply spams people with lists of the most commonly replied to
messages however. There are some topics that come up here (such as the antiwave group) that
someone who can't visit every day might not catch, and that would be worth hearing about as long
as it is a human making the call and writing the copy.

I'm happy to get advertising if it supports the site and imagine the sponsors would be the same as
with the site normally.










billiardsmike -

I think the opt-out is the key. As you said, your target is people that don't check in often.
Regular users may not appreciate it. Unfortunately, almost all of the feedback on this post is
going to be from your non-target group, since they're obviously active readers.










roddy -

Thanks for the responses. Should have made clear, users will definitely be able to opt out - in
fact you're all going to need to opt-in in the first place. The forums software itself doesn't
really allow a proper mailing list with confirmation of subscription emails, automated opt-out,
etc, hence I've bought a desktop app to handle it. What I'll probably do initially is send the
first one out to all members who haven't visited in the last x number of weeks / months (I'm
assuming that recent visitors haven't forgotten the forums yet, plus will see announcements like
this), that first one will include opt-in instructions, and after that it's only those who opt-in
will get it. I do need to be cautious as the chances of being tagged as spam email are much higher
than they used to be.

It will also be done manually, and I'll be exercising judgment. If the most popular topic one
month happens to be 'Pictures of My Kittens' from the Chat forum, that won't make it in, but a
long and detailed review of a good new textbook, even if nobody noticed it on the forum, would
definitely get a mention. I'll probably have a 'suggest a topic for the newsletter' topic running.

For anyone who's not aware, there are already automated email alerts available on a forum by forum
basis - eg See here and look under Forum Tools > Subscribe

As Mike says, anyone who's already seen this is probably not the target user. However, ideas are
welcome.










kudra -

My problem is that when I come back after not checking in for a while there is a huge backlog of
new posts that I have to sift through to find what I'm interested in. This is even with
subscribing to threads I post to, since this will not pick up related stuff.

I tried to auto-alert myself to topics I would be interested in by using pubsub but it never
worked for me on chinese-forums for some reason. pubsub is closed so it's moot.

Pubsub was going to use search engine-like technology; you put in a bunch of key words. What would
be more focused would be a tool that could learn what kinds of topics you were interested in, and
alert you when something interesting was posted. It could use an open source text classifier like
rainbow which you could either train on posts you find interesting, or perhaps just train it
automatically on threads one has contributed posts to. Seems with all the machine language
expertise among the membership this might be possible to build a tool from open source parts.
Probably google is already working on it.

Unfortunately I don't have time to do this, or I would have done it already.










Ninja -

How about also posting the newsletter to the forum and creating a dedicated RSS feed for it? That
way we would have an easily accessible archive and (those of us with RSS readers) would be able to
read the newsletter without getting anything in our inboxes.










roddy -

@kudra: I'm looking at ways to alert people to posts they specifically might be interested in, but
neither of the two ways I can see of doing it are perfect - one relies on a third-party provider,
which I don't like, the other one doesn't do everything I want it to do. I may yet look at coding
something myself, but am reluctant as I'm a rubbish coder, and it would almost guarantee that
VBulletin would launch a major upgrade next week making my work obsolete.

@ninja: I would certainly keep an archive on site, so I guess an RSS feed for it is possible.

Got subscription and unsubscription working via both email and web interface now, hoping to tidy
it up and integrate it into the forums a little more tomorrow. Once it's all up and running I'll
be open to suggestions about other more specialized email lists that might be a good idea.












All times are GMT +8. The time now is 04:40 PM.














Learn Chinese, Learning Chinese, Learning Materials, Mandarin audio lessons, Chinese writing lessons, Chinese vocabulary lists, About chinese characters, News in Chinese, Go to China, Travel to China, Study in China, Teach in China, Dictionaries, Learn Chinese Painting, Your name in Chinese, Chinese calligraphy, Chinese songs, Chinese proverbs, Chinese poetry, Chinese tattoo, Beijing 2008 Olympics, Mandarin Phrasebook, Chinese editor, Pinyin editor, China Travel, Travel to Beijing,