by Rich Lemert » Sat Dec 02, 2017 3:58 pm
For some reason Ralf's response hit me in a way that no other response has. It made me realize that this forum has been around for more than twenty years, and in our modern society that's an eternity. When this forum started there were no smart phones, internet access was often through clunky old modems, and sites like Twitter and LinkedIn didn't exist.
With this in mind, is this thread even asking the right question? After all, the first step to solving a problem is not just admitting that there is one, but also identifying the right problem. Instead of asking how to get more people to view this forum, maybe we should be asking questions like "what is our core message?", "who is are target audience?", and "what is the most effective way to deliver our message to that audience?"
Consider, for example, where this forum is hosted. At first glance you might think that it makes sense to have a site targeted at would-be scientists hosted by an organization devoted to science. However, who comes to mind first when you think about jobs and careers? For most of us, the answer would probably be LinkedIn. Do we even have a LinkedIn presence?
Today's young scientists grew up in the age of Twitter. When something happens, that's the first place many of them turn to for more "information". Twitter isn't very good for the type of discussions we have here, but is there a way we can leverage the things it is good at?
I came across a comment recently that might be applicable to this discussion. The person making the comment was celebrating the fact that a "thirty-something" had recently been elected to something like a state legislature or congress. "At last! Someone who knows what things are like today, and not what they were like twenty years ago."
What do you think? Are we asking the right question, or should we be asking ourselves a different question?