Our mission

Sponsors...

NanoCrazed

NanoCrazed

Supporting Member
BARcard
After being on BAR for the latest 2 years, I've met a lot of awesome folks. At the same time, I equally have met great reefers across the Bay Area, particularly in South Bay whom I've bumped into at LFS like Neptune... yet, a lot of folks I've met at LFSes or CL have yet to here about BAR.

This leads me to wonder -- how are we extending awareness to the greater community? CFM tabling, for example, only reaches a subset of folks who know about CFM and make it there. This is a small population.

How do we get more folks involved more broadly?

Should we be working more closely with sponsors to get the word out?
 
I think it’s important to tell people about BARs mission. This can come from everyone from our community. If it aligns with their beliefs and they want to be more involved with the reefing community, they will join. It’s free to access 99% of the forum and can be a supporting member after if it makes sense for them.
Quality over quantity is important too but if new reefers don’t know about BAR, there is no way they will join.
 
I don’t see a need to be a big club. If it happens that’s great but honestly I’d rather have a smaller number of good people
 
Coral reefer said:
Quality over quantity. Yes more members can be good, but I believe spending time and energy to make the club the best it can be is the best way to spend your time and energy.
If we build it they will come so to speak. My two cents.
Click to expand...
Speaking from personal experience, only way I found out about BAR was because I was searching to buy some rocks and Google happened to return results for a BST listing on BAR. I was pretty active on R2R but never even knew that BAR existed prior. So, bumped into BAR by blind luck and the all knowing being that is Google.

I'm glad I join as there are definitely quality folks...and having a local club makes the hobby more fun. Just wondering how other folks can find out about BAR and benefit...

would be interesting to take a poll of members to see how they first encountered BAR...
 
NanoCrazed said:
Speaking from personal experience, only way I found out about BAR was because I was searching to buy some rocks and Google happened to return results for a BST listing on BAR. I was pretty active on R2R but never even knew that BAR existed prior. So, bumped into BAR by blind luck and the all knowing being that is Google.

I'm glad I join as there are definitely quality folks...and having a local club makes the hobby more fun. Just wondering how other folks can find out about BAR and benefit...

would be interesting to take a poll of members to see how they first encountered BAR...
Click to expand...
Do it, it’s easy to make a poll.
 
Coral reefer said:
Quality over quantity. Yes more members can be good, but I believe spending time and energy to make the club the best it can be is the best way to spend your time and energy.
If we build it they will come so to speak. My two cents.
Click to expand...
Agreed,
Look what over indexing on sponsorship did to R2R.
That being said I wish to see more engagement from users and local ligit vendors..
Is there some sort of vetting proccess BAR do when bringing in a sponsor?


Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
 
NanoCrazed said:
Speaking from personal experience, only way I found out about BAR was because I was searching to buy some rocks and Google happened to return results for a BST listing on BAR. I was pretty active on R2R but never even knew that BAR existed prior. So, bumped into BAR by blind luck and the all knowing being that is Google.

I'm glad I join as there are definitely quality folks...and having a local club makes the hobby more fun. Just wondering how other folks can find out about BAR and benefit...

would be interesting to take a poll of members to see how they first encountered BAR...
Click to expand...
I found BAR through Neptune. I was talking to rob about my experince in R2R and about my incident with the tank transfer, he recommended I check BAR out.
I did and got hooked...now BAR is the only forum i hang around in.
Higher quality users for sure..
I love this forum!

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
 
Last edited:
I think this conversation is a great one to have and revisit periodically.

Word of mouth is probably the best way in my opinion. It can be as simple as introducing BAR to someone you meet and enjoyed chatting with at an LFS, NorCal portion of a global forum, or Craigslist reply. I do this regularly and I know other people do too. Lots of our active members have been introduced this way, and I think it is more authentic and personal, which is of course what we strive to be.

That said, I have no problem with trying other outreach options. I agree we want quality (read: active members giving back to the group, forming friendships, and promoting our mission) over quantity. The problem is that you can’t really tell the difference upfront between someone who will be a great and active member vs someone who won’t. I think getting the word out more broadly and exposing more people to the club will generate more great members in addition to more people who come and go. I’m sure there are lots of people in our area who would be great for BAR if only they knew about the club.
 
I ran a member drive a few years back, and a few people were pretty upset. They wanted people to find us so we knew they'd be "quality." Not that they were just joining to get something (in this case a special raffle.)

As to reaching more people the only way to do that is to find ways to reach them at LFS's. I have ideas on how to do that.
 
Do we use facebook to increase awareness of BAR?
That's a great outreach tool..
We can even run some targeted ads(toward reefers target)
Fb gives great control in to who you want your ad to reach...

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
 
"The primary purpose of BAR is to promote, foster, and encourage education and appreciation for the ethical husbandry and propagation of marine life."

It seems like in order to do that well, we have to be reaching new members and even people that are new to reefing. Otherwise they are left getting their information from other online boards. I'd say the information that you can get here at BAR is vastly better than what is on the "other" reef boards.

The largest reefing board these days is R2R and we don't seem to have any information there about the club. Posting there about events and frag swaps in particular might be a good start and help us fulfill the mission statement above and get more people to join the club and be involved.
 
ofzakaria said:
Do we use facebook to increase awareness of BAR?
That's a great outreach tool..
We can even run some targeted ads(toward reefers target)
Fb gives great control in to who you want your ad to reach...

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

We have a facebook page with 1100 "members."
 
Bruce Spiegelman said:
Nope.
Click to expand...
Aha, I was referring to use fb ad platform to increase awareness of the forum.
Not sure if BAR have a policy of bay area only or open to new members, regardless, thru fb we can (for cheap I might add) send a small ad to a target audiance..say reefers or reefers in a geographical area and increase awareness.
R2R and other buissness do that all the time.
Fb ads are cheap..

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
 
ofzakaria said:
Aha, I was referring to use fb ad platform to increase awareness of the forum.
Not sure if BAR have a policy of bay area only or open to new members, regardless, thru fb we can (for cheap I might add) send a small ad to a target audiance..say reefers or reefers in a geographical area and increase awareness.
R2R and other buissness do that all the time.
Fb ads are cheap..

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Here's the problem with that. I have to decline about 50% of the people wanting to join the FB site because of spam, misuse, etc. Facebook is not the place to recruit new members. It's too much a hodgepodge of bots, trolls, and I'm sure there's some good people too.
 
Bruce Spiegelman said:
Here's the problem with that. I have to decline about 50% of the people wanting to join the FB site because of spam, misuse, etc. Facebook is not the place to recruit new members. It's too much a hodgepodge of bots, trolls, and I'm sure there's some good people too.
Click to expand...
Just to make sure we are talking about the same thing here:
The flow is:
fb reach members who are identified as reefers(fb is good with putting filters and conditions to who the ad will go to, (example, posted pics called reef, have coral discussions, in bay area))
Ppl see the ads and look BAR website up
Ppl sign up to the BAR website

Meaning people will meed to physically come to bar site, creat an account and sign up..

You will still have the same controlability in to who is accepted and who is not..we only made more people aware of bar.
If we are discussing increasing awareness, it is by definition a goal or bringing more ppl, not sure having spam will increase that much given BAR require an account...

No?

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
 
Signing up to a fb page is much easier since u just need to click, that's why spams are more on fb pages.
But on our BAR website the sign up is an involved proccess with informations and email..I would think it's less spammy. That's why am advocating to use fb just for the advertisement...its the same as other reaching out methods, just faster and cheaper.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top