Chat groups for BuSo members?

[bernard]

Hey,

I'm feeling lonely At least when it comes to having people to talk to about this business of ours. It doesn't have to be mastermind stuff, just a place to let off steam, ask a quick question or share some laughs and stories with other marketers.

Is there any group for BuSo members out there?

 

[Tao]

I have often thought this might be a good idea too, using Skype, Slack or Discord or something like that.
However, BuSo works well as it is already and too much comms can be a time suck.

 

[CCarter]

We purposely do not have a chat. It always descends into random talks and becomes a time drain. As well if you notice all the forums that have "official" or "unofficial" chats die because people went to the chat instead.

Chat are also a mental drain - there can be a wall of 300 or 3000 text lines and it's all about bitcoin or some other nonsense not everyone cares about. In a forum I can just choose not to read the topics I don't like and go to the topics I am interested in. In fact I need to leave some of these chats I'm in right now. There is very little benefit to gain after a couple of months and in the end I rarely learn anything that wasn't already talked about.

 

[bernard]

I get that CCarter, but what about a chat thread?

 

[Steve Brownlie]

if you notice all the forums that have "official" or "unofficial" chats die because people went to the chat instead.

This is so true. Some great poker forums died completely back in the day because all the expert members went to the chat too so it's pretty much industry agnostic.

I've also been trying to be active on Slack chats this year, mainly to raise my profile with some different audiences.

The big challenge is you have no idea if anything interesting/that you could add value to has gone on while you were away.

So it's a case of scrolling through, as @CCarter says huge walls of text just to find the odd thing you want to get involved with.

I'm on the fence at the moment, but it's likely I don't say much on Slack this year except in small 'single purpose' channels like the one I run, because I just don't see a way to make the time 'well spent' compared to forums, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook groups etc where it's much easier to just engage in the things that are relevant to you.

Superficially they look super active/lots of discussion but the discussions are insanely ephemeral so the chances someone really awesome goes back 10,000 lines and drops some amazing knowledge is approximately 0, whereas on a forum like this it's close to 100% likely you get some great feedback to your question.

 

[CCarter]

a chat thread?

What's a chat thread?

 

[turbin3]

I find chats can be useful under 3 circumstances:

• Time-sensitive discussion
  • Ex: Group chat for quickly assessing major algorithm changes.
• Narrow subject focus with a purpose
  • Ex: Group chat for organizing an event.
• Light, short term content
  • Ex: Forum threads = "evergreen". Chats = filler, entertainment, not-gonna-rank type stuff.

Communication
It's exactly like communication within a large organization. Some stuff needs a quick interaction to fix urgent problems or create quick action plans. Other content demands more consideration.

Important things like tutorials, documentation, guidelines, etc. should probably be posted on some sort of CMS for long term storage. People will need to refer back to them. They also might want to consider their responses and refine them, cutting to the heart of a matter. Over time, those posts and threads might also need to be updated.

Productivity
Chats seem great, and it's easy for them to even seem efficient. The thing is, it's real easy for them to end up being a productivity and time drain.

General rule of thumb is, the more permanent and long term the content outlet, the greater the depth of insight and concise messaging should be. I'd much rather scroll through 1 or 2 thread pages of deep thoughts, versus hundreds or thousands of shallow chat comments.

Here's an idea
@ragnar, I totally get the feeling. One thing that might help is approaching it from a different perspective. Here's an example:

• Problem: Maybe I've been stuck or failing lately. It would sure be nice to have sort of a "group therapy" chat so I could mentally work through things and gain some confidence back!
• Opportunity: Well, any kind of FAIL stuff is always popular. This digital marketing stuff is, after all, a tough racket!
  
• Solution: I'll create a productive FAIL thread about a specific subject, framing it for a positive outcome (so it doesn't get off-track).
  • Thread: "What Was Your Biggest Marketing FAIL of 2017"
  • Content: Variety of fails covering various areas of marketing (aka Thread + semantic keywords!)
  • Goal: Problem + Solution (aka Thread question + outcome statement like, "What was it? How did you recover?")

See what I mean? Everyone gets a bit of entertainment, some value and usefulness comes out of it, and everyone (including BuSo) wins!

 

[Ryuzaki]

I get that CCarter, but what about a chat thread?

That's supposed to be the point of the Water Cooler section on the forum, chatting about whatever we want as long as we keep it civil.

______

My opinion on the matter is that chats are worthless. They're like going to the bar after work. It's only worth it to network so that when the right moment strikes you'll have made those connections. But nothing worthwhile happens at the bar.

I quit all Skype chats and de-friended 95% of my contacts a couple years ago. It's been great for productivity. I've let chats ruin me since the days of AIM, decades worth of wasted time that was worth nothing but some chuckles. Like everyone else said, nothing of substance happens due to the format and medium.

Forums encourage everyone to slow down and think and to type something of value, especially since it creates a record of your participation. It's a record that can be searched and mined for gold, unlike chat logs which quickly become overwhelming, even for keyword searches due to the amount of shenanigans going on constantly.

It's also a quick way to become disillusioned about this industry, when you realize 99% of the chat participants are failing, brand new and have nothing to add, or lying about their success. It's usually the case that you're the one with something to offer and there's nothing for you to gain by being there, only a lot of productivity to lose.

 

[contract]

- All chats end up dying.
- All chats end up being 99% offtopic and 1% on-topic.
- It's become more "every man for himself" over the past few years. (No one's openly sharing)
- It's lonely at the top.

It used to be where you could throw out a coding, SEO or marketing question into any chat and you'd get back a response from at least 4-5 people with answers instantly. (Now that was awesome) These days, your lucky to get a response back in few hours, it's more like days, and more than often, you never even get a response. The question just goes unanswered.

Skype has turned into AIM. People just aren't using it as much anymore. A lot of the people who still use chats have ventured into other things like Bitcoin and other bullshit. Slack is nice and all, but it doesn't solve anything better than Skype. Most of the slack groups have like 500-1000's+ people at a time and the moment you post something it's the same as doing it publicly. Nothing feels private anymore.

 

[bernard]

Thanks for the responses. I was mostly looking for light conversation, gossip and event stuff, not as a means of asking variations of "i can has monies plz", but your point is well taken. I do have a long list of skype contacts from my previous run. Could be a good idea to reach out and see what everyone's doing.