[Roosh]

The travel forum is growing...

   

I get two ideas which I think can take things to the next level.

1. Custom google map pinned with cities discussed in the forum. When you click on a pin, there will be a write-up compiled from forum data. It will contain three sections:

1. General Tips - Info on the city and dealing with the local women.
2. Daytime - Places to go during the day
3. Nighttime - Places to go at night

For example say there are five threads on Rio. One or two guys distills the info shared on the forum into the Google pin, so that someone doesn't have to wade through a bunch of posts to get the best tips.

I still think information should be shared and vetted on the forum first before being added to such a map.

Potential problems: Who is going to do the updating? How often will it be updated? Maybe some guys can volunteer to be in charge of a certain area or country.

2. Custom google map of user locations outside the u.s.

This map will have forum members present city location. I've seen a couple threads with "So are you still in so and so city?" and people keep asking me if i'm in medellin or wherever. This will eliminate doubt. Optional of course.

Potential problems: Users forget to change their pin, causing the map to be outdated.

Comments on these ideas? On the best way to execute them? Another ideas welcome as well.

I'm impressed with what I've seen first-hand about how the forum can bring guys together (PartyTime, Gringoed, Lumiere, and myself in Medellin) to have a good time and share knowledge.

[PartyTime]

Roosh, one of the best ways to increase search engine traffic to the forums is to require people to write detailed subject lines. This will allow search engines users to find the valuable content on this forum

For example:

Subject line: Medellin
- its very hard to get ranked in google (for any term) on this because its so broad and has so many competing pages.

Subject line: How to get laid in Medellin
- much better, This makes it clear what the page is about, and the page will show up to users searching for different variations of "getting laid in Medellin" search terms.


The more traffic we get in the forum, the more people will join and contribute, and the greater our travel knowledge base will be. I think its worth modifying subject lines of old threads and future threads yourself if the subject is not descriptive enough.

[VonDoogan]

i'm an affiliate marketer, mostly do ppc and seo. couple quick tips.

is there a way to setup "clean URLs?" this would dramatically increase traffic from search engines in my experience. a thread would be like rooshvforum.network/travel/experiences-in-buenos-aires.html

if there is a tagging plugin for this forum software, that will allow users to tag threads with keywords and phrases which will also increase search engine traffic. also, by watching your referrers you can see what types of terms you are pulling search traffic for already and build on that. you should have meta tags for keywords and description as well. these could be autogenerated by the tags.

definitely take 5 minutes once in a while to submit a thread to Digg or Delicious or some other site where you can drop a link. the #1 way search engines rank pages, by far, is through their backlinks. use a keyword on a page and use that keyword as the "anchor text" of your link back to the page. not only will this increase rankings, but some of these social bookmarking / voting sites can pull visitors directly from them. could even use a little snippet of javascript to greet visitors from web 2.0 sites, depending on the referrer. (eg., "Hey, I see you came from Reddit. Have a look around and feel free to jump in the conversation!")

about google maps, i've done some pretty cool stuff with dynamically plotting points with various info on maps. tons of possibilities for that.

[Peoloom]

I also think a tagging feature would be cool. Maybe even with a pre-determined list of tags that people can choose from. It would save people coming here for travel advice a lot of time.

[Pepini]

I think it was sugested to divide the travel forum by continents.

[Tama]

I like the idea of having per-region information compiled. But the google maps thing would be harder than, say, a wiki, and while it would be cool to have this stuff in a map, and not some list, it won't make much of a difference.

[PartyTime]

Roosh, I was reading some of the older posts on the forum, and I see a lot of great posts by people who are aren't posting anymore. I suspect that many these people stopped posting because they just forgot about the forum. They probably still have a love of traveling and meeting girls abroad like we all do, but simply forgot that this forum exists.

I think it would be a great idea so send out an email every month or 2, highlighting some of the best threads of the month, and inviting people back to the forum to post.

Some of our lost posters of the past had some really great knowledge to share.

[Roosh]

That's kind of like how it is in the blog too... commenters move on to something else.

I'll see if there is a plugin that pings people who are inactive for a while, though I'm hesitant to bug people.

[hydrogonian]

I assume that this forum is not just for personal gratification, but as an overall strategy to build traffic for your book sales. Also, as someone who just finished a book in a different niche, I'm aware that forums can represent the largest traffic draw for an internet book vendor. With that in mind, I offer these suggestions:

1. Ditch the current forum URL, and set up a new URL for your forums that make the forum directory the FIRST page of the URL. Currently, your forums are hidden behind your blog. Thats fine for us regular blog readers, but all/most of the other traffic is lost because the forums aren't readily visible on the first page of a url. I read your blog for almost six months before I even noticed that you had forums. The menu link, from your blog, doesn't stand out or catch the eye.

But that doesnt matter. Archive the current forum, and direct all future blog traffic to a unique forum URL. Your current forum users will build momentum there, and so the game is already mostly won for you in setting up a new URL. Additionally, the forum can now be branded as its own entity, and you should eventually get a lot more forum traffic. You can make links to the archived forums and banners for your book sales pages.

2. To make a truly useable travel forum, you need location specific subforums. So, you would have a brazil sub-forum, a colombia sub forum, etc. Almost any travel/geography centric forum, that is successful, does this. I could give you countless examples. Having location specific threads mixed in with each other makes the forum less useable, especially as traffic and posts grow.

Hope this helps a bit....

[thegmanifesto]

(11-01-2009 11:16 AM)hydrogonian Wrote:  

I assume that this forum is not just for personal gratification, but as an overall strategy to build traffic for your book sales. Also, as someone who just finished a book in a different niche, I'm aware that forums can represent the largest traffic draw for an internet book vendor. With that in mind, I offer these suggestions:

1. Ditch the current forum URL, and set up a new URL for your forums that make the forum directory the FIRST page of the URL. Currently, your forums are hidden behind your blog. Thats fine for us regular blog readers, but all/most of the other traffic is lost because the forums aren't readily visible on the first page of a url. I read your blog for almost six months before I even noticed that you had forums. The menu link, from your blog, doesn't stand out or catch the eye.

But that doesnt matter. Archive the current forum, and direct all future blog traffic to a unique forum URL. Your current forum users will build momentum there, and so the game is already mostly won for you in setting up a new URL. Additionally, the forum can now be branded as its own entity, and you should eventually get a lot more forum traffic. You can make links to the archived forums and banners for your book sales pages.

2. To make a truly useable travel forum, you need location specific subforums. So, you would have a brazil sub-forum, a colombia sub forum, etc. Almost any travel/geography centric forum, that is successful, does this. I could give you countless examples. Having location specific threads mixed in with each other makes the forum less useable, especially as traffic and posts grow.

Hope this helps a bit....

I think those are good suggestions. Especially the "location specific subforums".

"Also, as someone who just finished a book in a different niche"

Whats your book?

[doriangray]

I like the idea of user map locations. That would be really handy when meeting up with people! The updating tool of your own location should be very easy and quick to use. Would it be possible to have a location status of yourself seen every time you reply to a thread? This way when a user is writing something, they would always see their status and would remember to update it if necessary.

Subsections on counries/areas might work when there's a bit more discussion. Maybe not at this point?

And hey, when's Medellin guide coming out? The crowds are waiting.. ;-)

[Roosh]

Quote:

when's Medellin guide coming out

I'm getting sidetracked with traveling, studying portuguese, and a massive newsletter revamp I'm almost done with. Hopefully by march 2010. :/

[Roosh]

(11-01-2009 11:16 AM)hydrogonian Wrote:  

Currently, your forums are hidden behind your blog.

I like the slow growth of the forum because right now it has a community feel to it with a good balance of veterans and newbies.

Quote:

I read your blog for almost six months before I even noticed that you had forums.

But is this bad? That means you come to the forum with a good knowledge of the theory and ideas that will be discussed in the forum. In other words you'll probably be more likely to "fit in."

Quote:

2. To make a truly useable travel forum, you need location specific subforums. So, you would have a brazil sub-forum, a colombia sub forum, etc. Almost any travel/geography centric forum, that is successful, does this.

I disagree.

1. The search utility works well so you just plug in a country or city and it spits out pretty relevant results. I plan on compiling topics quarterly like I did here: http://www.rooshv.com/travel-advice-on-o...d-counting

2. Segregating the forums means less views for individual threads, as people will camp out in areas they are interested in. In many travel forums I just head to the South America folder instead of browsing around. By having everything in one forum, people will check out other threads they wouldn't otherwise.

[for.petes.sake]

Hey Roosh I got a suggestion. Could you make a sub forum in the Travel forum just for race based game. I have been planning a trip this summer and I have been visiting the travel forum a lot to read threads but it is kind of an eye sore to come the travel forum just to see no real datasheets and just half of the threads on where (insert x race) can do well in (insert y country). I haven't thought of a name for this sub forum but maybe you or another forum member can come up with one.

[Cattle Rustler]

(03-17-2019 02:39 PM)for.petes.sake Wrote:  

Hey Roosh I got a suggestion. Could you make a sub forum in the Travel forum just for race based game. I have been planning a trip this summer and I have been visiting the travel forum a lot to read threads but it is kind of an eye sore to come the travel forum just to see no real datasheets and just half of the threads on where (insert x race) can do well in (insert y country). I haven't thought of a name for this sub forum but maybe you or another forum member can come up with one.

Pretty sure I know what race threads you're talking about, and it's mostly the same guys coming up with them.

I wish we could promote the travel forum more, I searched today's new posts and the first page was pretty much Everything Else with only 2-3 Travel threads on it and 1-2 of them were the "Where Can Asians do Best" threads.