The Forum – Discuss the Challenge with Friends
Originally from: http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com/training/preseason/30dcforum.php
Also on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Wuy3Z8Cihg
Hi there 30 Day Challengers, Caro here, and my video today is going to be about one of my favorite topics: the 30 Day Challenge forum. For those of you that have been around for a few years, you may have observed that I’m quite prolific in the forum. I’m very passionate about helping people and also leveraging the forum because I know for me in my first year that the forum was instrumental as well as my team and my group. The forum was very much instrumental for me in my success in the 30 Day Challenge, so it was thanks to the community of the forum and also maybe I’d offer some things I did right with how I posted, how I approached the forum and posting that really made my 30 Day Challenge experience something that I’ll talk about for the rest of my days because it certainly gave me my start in internet marketing. So, come this way and I look forward to taking you through forum, forum protocol, and what each section is for and so forth. So, come on.
So here we are at the forum itself. I’ve just typed in www.thirtydaychallenge.com/forums/ so that’s how I get to the forum. And here you can see that I’m already logged in. Now, it’s important to write down and remember your username and password so that you can access it very easily. And you can also of course login with Facebook connect. So this is the memory of my login has been saved on my browser as well. So you’ll see here that we have quite a few different sections.
Now, the main ones for 2009 are the General Chat, now I know that some of the terminology here may not seem as specific as you may like it, and we accept that, at the same time this is a terminology that has been around for a while, so just to help you understand, General Chat is for everything to do with the 30 Day Challenge, the experience, the strategy, the techniques, any questions you have about it, and so forth. So general chat is about general chat to do with the 30 Day Challenge.
Getting Ready for the Challenge is about pre-season training chat for 2009, so this is a new section that has been created specifically for 2009. So in many ways you can ignore this section here [Pre-season ‘08].
Team Talk, and I’ll go into it, is where you can set up, look for a team. So that’s sort of the section, and as I mentioned the other day, I will be doing a separate video on teams themselves because again as well as the forum, my team was instrumental, or I believe they were, to my 30 Day Challenge experience.
Extra Tips, for those that want to offer some tips that are more related to general internet marketing, possibly with 30 Day Challenge but they’re really, when you go and have a look you’ll see some of the quality of the tips in that.
30 Day Challenge Experiences, these are experiences you’ve actually had, some wins, maybe some hurdles that you’ve overcome. It really is about sharing your experiences here.
General Internet Marketing chat is for things, anything outside of the 30 Day Challenge, so the 30 Day Challenge is in this section [General Chat] and this is to talk about non-related 30 Day Challenge topics. And even though this sections says that, the same rules apply with regards to the, I suppose the culture and environment we have in the 30 Day Challenge and I’ll go into that a little bit more as well.
Meetups is where you can set up for meetups in your particular area. And here really this is about, you know people are expected to post on a particular thread rather than to where they’re meeting up, and it’s really up to individuals here to set them up. We certainly encourage people to connect face-to-face because that can be, you know, just add that extra element as well. Because so much of this is behind a computer screen and keyboard.
30 Day Challenge Plus is for something outside of the 30 day challenge, so I’m not going to speak too much on this because it’s not that relevant for the 30 Day Challenge.
Then we have forum questions, comments, suggestions, this is more where you may be struggling with some difficulties to do with navigating around the forum or something like that.
And then this is just a test board. And you can also see that you can tell who’s online at any one time. And some other bits and pieces here.
So let’s have a look. I’m going to take you through to I think the rules and procedures, because I really believe this will set you up well for your forum experience because every forum is different and I think the 30 Day Challenge forum is really quite a unique one. We have the most incredible culture here, it’s a real support each other culture, it’s positive culture, and we do have a few rules, I believe we don’t have that many, but a few that Ed and Dan have requested and we certainly as moderators we will advocate those rules. So here, signatures are to have one link in them, and they can be a friend feed or a twitter link. So it’s one, not two. Some people are trying to get away with two. You can also have the 30 Day Challenge history and one quote of choice, and be in normal size font. I’ve got there how they’ll be moderated.
No links in the body copy of your post that lead to a website or blog related to your name or business which has a lead capture, adsense, or affiliate product of yours, or something you’re affiliated to. Self-promotion is really not what we’re about here. So there are to be no affiliate links of the body copy of your post.
And then there’s also to be no links to your niche blog that you’re testing for the 30 Day Challenge. That’s actually more for you to protect yourself because unfortunately there’s just a really small minority that don’t always have the best intentions, so we really do ask that you keep that to yourself. Certainly you can share your niche and everything with your team members and again I’ll be speaking about that in another video.
No flaming, no directing anger at another 30 Day Challenger, name calling, defamation of character, sharing your frustration or so forth. Now we’ve all learned different ways of operating and it’s really, sometimes we can get really really frustrated and it seems perfectly reasonable to us to say, well you’re the fault, you’re the reason I feel this way, might be a particular entity, it could be Ed, could be me, could be Market Samurai or WordPressDirect, and you’re feeling that in some way they’ve let you down or the support has. It’s really not appropriate in this environment to, we consider that to be flaming if you go well, you’re a this that the other, if you’re feeling frustrated, own it. I recommend writing if you’re really feeling the need to , is something along the lines of “Hey, I’m feeling really frustrated here, I’m not sure what to do next.” So really think about something before you type a post. And I know that this has stood me in very very good stead when I started my 30 Day Challenge because I found that people wanted to help me more because I was very much demonstrating that I wanted to help myself. So, and again, please know that when you are moderated it’s not something that’s a personal attack. We sometimes get people that feel that, how dare we moderate them? There are these rules here and we will follow these moderation rules.
No spamming, and no duplicate posting by the same author.
And then again, procedures, this is another thing that’s really important and will be moderated. Please use the search function before posting. This particular forum has been going since 2007, 2008, 2009. There’s an awful lot of information already there. The search function is an excellent search function. I know I taught myself to use it and it was trial and error. And really, I would say same goes for you, just learn how to get the most out of this search function. But generally most questions have already been asked, so I would recommend that you use the search function. Again, it shows that you are trying to help yourself.
No need to PM any of us. Our commitment is to help the community at large, so we will not be answering one-on-one PMs, unless we specifically give permission for someone to PM us about something because our commitment is to help the group at large, and one post, out of responding to one post has a capacity to help many.
Make the headline relevant. For the support go to these particular areas. Encouraging you to use tags. And really there’s a lot of knowledge in the 30 Day Challenge out there in the community. When it comes to the 30 Day Challenge itself, the key people to listen to are Ed, Dan, and GuruBob. They are the creators of the 30 Day Challenge. I also do have a role where I am their mouthpiece on the forum. So I really do not offer anything unless it has come directly from them. So there’s safety there or so to read what I write. But key thing is really to listen to Ed, Dan, and GuruBob.
So I’ve gone through what each area means. So let’s just go in and have a look about how to post. So let’s say I wanted to create a new post. I would go to new thread here. So that’s post a new thread. So I would just start here, I would put my title in. Now as I’ve said before you want to be really helpful. “This is a Dummy Post For Demonstration Purposes” So that’s telling you exactly what it is.
Notice I’m not doing it all in caps. If I did, I would expect that to be moderated because that’s essentially shouting at somebody. And again, writing it, again you don’t write it all in caps. You might want to emphasize a few words here and there in bold or italics. “Hi there everyone, I have been watching…” So I can type something like this about how I’ve been watching the videos, I notice that GuruBob said xyz, I’m not quite that clear on what that means, or something like that, so I’m actually in my post I would always demonstrate the action that I have taken and how I’ve tried to help myself already because I find that when you’re polite and you show that you’re looking to help yourself, people are more willing to help you. I’m sure that’s the same for you, you’re more willing to help people that are looking to help themselves.
And you can put tags here, or if you want you can put a little smiley face and then you can preview and submit. So that’s just if we’re doing that.
So really, I think that’s pretty much it with the forum, I am such a big advocate of this forum, it was instrumental for me. I was a prolific poster, I still am a prolific poster, the difference is that now I’m answering people’s questions, but in my first year, so in this section we had, I was asking questions, it was probably daily. The key thing was that I was taking action and I was watching the videos piece by piece, and because I was an absolute newbie, sometimes it felt like they were speaking Japanese to me. So I was really really careful. I thought about each post before I made it, and about how I could best elicit the assistance that I needed. So really what I’d say to you is take responsibility for yourself. Certainly we don’t expect you to know everything. We do understand that you may not get a concept right away. I mean, I certainly didn’t when I did the 30 Day Challenge. To post and sort of suggest that somehow someone else is lacking is really not going to get our attention, or anybody’s attention because you’re not demonstrating that you’re a keen eager student. And I know from personal experience and I know from other people’s experiences that really when you write something on forum with respect, and you’re on your best behavior, you tend to get inundated with this most amazing community and people that will assist you. So really, do come to the forum. We are a friendly bunch ere. The moderating team is brilliant. I just have so much respect for my team and they’re doing a great job. And really, if you do go against any of these rules and procedures you will be moderated so please expect that and don’t take it personally. And I would say that those that are, are a minute small minority, so I just get blown away every year by the amazing new people that turn up and get themselves known by us. And it’s just an absolute joy and delight to assist you through your 30 Day Challenge.
Now just quickly up here we’ve got the other sections, so the training section and the blog section here, so if I click on this you can see, there I am. There or training, again, I love these icons. Just absolutely brilliant.
So, I think that will do. I’ll go to the final slide for make sure. And then I look forward to making my next video for you which will be on teams.
So there you go. A video on the forum, navigating the forum. I did focus mostly on the General chat area because that is what we would be expecting you to use with regards to questions on your 30 Day Challenge experience. I’ll talk more about the team area in the forum when I will do the team video for you very very soon. So thank you again for watching this, I hope it has been informative for you, and I look forward to talking to you again. Take care, bye!
