How do you get your forum users to read announcements?

[Dean]

By announcements I mean "This cool thing is happening, you should check it out" - not "If you post pictures of tubgirl, you'll be shot in the foot"

For those types of things, alternate communication channels work best for us. Call people up and let them know. Instant messaging, twitter, or even email could work too, but I don't think as well. Problem is, people get into a groove, and it really is tough to get out of that.

I would reserve the software tricks for important things like major changes in terms of service.


Although I have seen things done like locking innocent threads (everyone reads locked threads, don't they?) and putting the message at the end... things like that only work 1 or 2 times, and people are generally not happy about that.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Q: How do you get your forum users to read announcements?

I always find on forums I run that if I sticky announcements, people get 'sticky fever' and don't check them - and if I put them in an announcements section, regardless of how busy the forum is, people don't check it.
How do you get your forum users to read announcements?

(1) IDEA: Trigger an Alert !
- a modification, that an admin can post an announcement and it would automatically trigger an alert to everyone. Possibly a "Special Alert" could be generated. Instead of a Red [1] showing up, some "[Special Alert]" could show up. It would look so impressive, people would click on it.

Re: Trigger an Alert ! I like where your heads at with that one... an announcement method is missing I do believe, and would be nice to have something simple like that... the ability to post a specific manner that triggers an alert to every user when they next come online, regardless when that is. Have you suggested that in the suggestion forum?

I think "Triggering an Alert !" is a more subtle way of getting users to read announcements.

A: But I would say Xenforo has aced this desire with NOTICES ! Super Cool stuff. Great Job XenForo.

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[Digital Doctor]

Any other ways to get people to read announcements ?

 

[Edrondol]

 

[Morgain]

I think an Announcement should
- show up in Whats New (LOTS of people use that as their main springboard
- trigger an alert
- trigger a notify email as if user is Watching
- display as Notice

I mean it just has to be unavoidable!

 

[zappaDPJ]

If it's that important why not use the in built Notice system? Brighten it up with some HTLM and make sure it slides by having more than one notice and it'll be rather hard to miss. Here's one of mine from when I installed Tapatalk on a forum.

 

[Shelley]

Chris Deeming's notifications would be a good solution and would offer a variety of possibilities to grab the users attention.

Alternatively. Mass discourage users and redirect them to the announcement then they really don't have much of a choice.

 

[Chris D]

Any other ways to get people to read announcements ?

Deal with people who don't read announcements in the same way you deal with people who necro post.

Punch them in the face.

 

[Shelley]

Deal with people who don't read announcements in the same way you deal with people who necro post.

Punch them in the face.

 

[vVv]

trigger alert would be nice, along with http://xenforo.com/community/threads/massalert-send-custom-alerts-to-groups-of-users.9883/ i don't like it that most members can't be bothered to read announcements either. plus sometimes most of them dont even use real email addresses when joining, so if you mass email them about something important, they never get it either. >_<. Almost need like "force users to read thread" before they're allowed to view other parts of forums.. Thought there was something like that here for resource.. or it's PAID.. . Doesn't help broke folk sigh lol.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Deal with people who don't read announcements in the same way you deal with people who necro post.

 

[Edrondol]

I love you guys.

 

[Cal]

If it's that important why not use the in built Notice system? Brighten it up with some HTLM and make sure it slides by having more than one notice and it'll be rather hard to miss. Here's one of mine from when I installed Tapatalk on a forum.

View attachment 37998

That looks nice. I might do something similar for mine. I usually post it up, and if no one replies....I'll email it the entire board.