Hyphen & The Question of Organic Growth

[CarsOfFortLangley]

So, I've seen some discussion around people expressing doubt around our potential for organic growth without big daddy Jalopnik. To be honest, I always thought, at least near the end, that Jalopnik was reliant on us rather than the other way around; we were a) dedicated kinja users and b) a source for content/inspiration/leads.

The below represents my personal thoughts, and I'd love to hear dissenting or supporting opinions from other Oppo's.

Active Recruitment

Facebook - This morning I joined Oppositelock's FB group with my burner FB account that I used to use to stalk claimants and made a post. Seems positive so far... I know that there are some past issues there, but I really think that it could be a source of fresh members and that here, we have a great community and community guidelines, we could help grow those people into strong new members. They're familiar with our "brand" and for sure interested in cars.

Drivetribe - I don't understand where this "Hyphen vs. DriveTribe" thing came from. It's literally 2 websites. As I write this, I have like, 9 different sites open....it isn't a big deal to check both during the day. I like the idea of Drivetribe and there seems to be some organic growth arising from the "crossposts" that occur on the site. I'd like to see us export (key word!) some of our better content there to drive new membership.

Local Communities - An interesting thing about IRL Oppo meets is that, typically 25%-50% of the people who actually turn out are not Oppos. Also, I am sure that we all live in communities with thriving car communities. I'd encourage some active recruitment through those means. I've had people on both my Instagram and IRL ask about all this "Oppo" business. Remember, a lot of people are just looking for a place to belong.

[davesaddiction]

Both/and is great, but what we didn't want to have happen is for the community to fracture and half to end up at DT and half end up here (or elsewhere). Some users will only be active in one place. Plenty of Opponauts ONLY did OPPO - no other social media. I think the idea of using DT as the new location for The Best of OPPO has merit - would be a way to keep the best stuff posted here in more public view, and would draw new like-minded members.

[CarsOfFortLangley]

@davesaddiction I really strongly feel that is the way forward.

[WhoIsTheLeader]

@davesaddiction I concur. The way Drive Tribe is set up I feel it would fracture the community to be only present there. I see it as a sort of "best of" that allows for greater visibility and reward for more high quality posts that simultaneously drives clicks over here for the curious and allows an author's work to gain more recognition. Basically the FP shares of old but on a different website.

[BicycleBuck]

I'd really like to see a tool where I could write something here and, with the click of a magic button, post it over at DT too. It's beyond my skillset, but I'm sure someone around here could make it happen!

[davesaddiction]

@carsoffortlangley We'll have to have a discussion, at some point, of the best way to do this. Clearly, any users who desire to are free to post their stuff both here and there, but maybe it's time to bring back The Best of OPPO in the @DasWauto style that puts together all the best every week into one post that actually link back to the originals here (that would prevent the issue of DT "owning" the content).

[Smallbear]

@whoistheleader @davesaddiction I know if it all went to DT, I wouldn't be following. I imagine there are others of similar mind.

[CarsOfFortLangley]

@davesaddiction I think that there is already or soon to be some background discussion on this. I agree, I think "content" is the way to drive us forward.

[jminer]

@bicyclebuck I can make share to FB and Instagram buttons (I think) if folks are interested but I don't think that DriveTribe is big enough that folks have developed those hooks into it.
@CarsOfFortLangley You are 100% right, Drivetribe and the Facebook Group and other organic growth methods are definitely essential. Also right now I probably have 100 tabs open, so the trick for me is finding which one to refresh

[Chariotoflove]

So I was talking to CofFL on his Kinjoppo thread, and this is what I’ve been advocating for. I think we ask the DT honcho to put a link to the Hyphen on the Oppo Tribe site. This would be shades of the days gone by when Oppo was directly attached to the Jalopnik commercial site. It will bring new members probably at a rate comparable at least to what we’ve been getting since disconnection from the FP proper.

At the same time, we have a permalink here to the DT page. This makes sense because after all aren’t most of us cruising more than one car site in a day? This brings more readership to the DT site without the liability of having to internally host our forum. Wins all around.

[Wrong Wheel Drive]

@davesaddiction said in Hyphen & The Question of Organic Growth:

but maybe it's time to bring back The Best of OPPO in the @DasWauto style that puts together all the best every week into one post that actually link back to the originals here

This was the reason I came to oppo in the first place. I enjoyed how I could read just high quality posts by following that. It seemed like a ton of thankless work for DasWauto though so I don't blame him for stopping. My goal was always to make it into the post which was a fun hobby. Maybe we have some sort of user generated automatic approach to it? Like a poll that curates which posts are chosen and then some code to auto generate a post. Then a human can just check that it was right and then hit post.

[davesaddiction]

@wrong-wheel-drive No idea how much effort building something would take. I've considered taking it up in the past, and helped maintain OppoBlog which served as the continuation of Best of OPPO at Kinja. I might be able to take it on, if there's no simpler automated way to do it. I honestly do think it takes a curator, though. Plenty of shitposts on OPPO get tons of stars and comments.

[Wrong Wheel Drive]

@davesaddiction said in Hyphen & The Question of Organic Growth:

@wrong-wheel-drive No idea how much effort building something would take. I've considered taking it up in the past, and helped maintain OppoBlog which served as the continuation of Best of OPPO at Kinja. I might be able to take it on, if there's no simpler automated way to do it. I honestly do think it takes a curator, though. Plenty of shitposts on OPPO get tons of stars and comments.

That curator role is the hard part though. That's what I had in mind with the poll. The poll could help weed out the shitposts. The poll would contain shit posts and everything else upvoted but the users would vote in the poll to do the curating for best of. Sure, that could still miss out the great posts that just get missed by the masses. But it's a start. The goal is just to have the responsibility shared by more than one volunteer so that it's more sustainable.

[CarsOfFortLangley]

@wrong-wheel-drive I think the goal is to have a team of curators? We'll see how things develop

[Exage03040]

This was mostly the reason I did up some of the recruitment stuff. Eventually in the next couple days, I get on some hosting site to store them for linking (other than kinja). I'm sort of getting the 'If you see an Oppo, recruit them' for the initial stages. We all know what's Oppo, but we're also our own containment with the door being sort of wide open. I know many of us are done with Jalopnik (I probably am) but it might be wise to pop in and poach occasionally if there's a decent take. Cross with other groups is good in this manner too. I'm hoping this is our definitive main Oppo hub we branch from.

Also 'The Best of Oppo' or Oppo's very own FP should be a decent incentive should jminer and gang implement. If you see a site blatantly rip or reference our stuff without a hat tip, let them know we're here, because it does happen.

[RallyDarkstrike]

I'm agreeing with most of you as in Oppo being 'home', but posting our better content on DriveTribe to show what we are capable of and to attract new folks!

[Alfalfa]

@davesaddiction Best of Oppo on DT is a good idea, as is Jminer's idea that we have a "front page" of sorts on this site that showcases all the actual articles without the shitposting. If we can get the Google results on here that we'd sometimes get from the Kinja page I think that would work out very well.

[ITA97]

@davesaddiction said in Hyphen & The Question of Organic Growth:

Both/and is great, but what we didn't want to have happen is for the community to fracture and half to end up at DT and half end up here (or elsewhere). Some users will only be active in one place. Plenty of Opponauts ONLY did OPPO - no other social media. I think the idea of using DT as the new location for The Best of OPPO has merit - would be a way to keep the best stuff posted here in more public view, and would draw new like-minded members.

This. This is what I see as the best case scenario.

[beefchips]

I'm tend to agree that if there's no outside "advertising" so to say then oppo will shrink. Personally I only found out about oppo because I started reading Jalopnik because it was linked on some reddit thread or other. I am sympathetic to folks who want to keep the excellent-to-each-other factor high though.