Please help us recruit new Myswag.org Members!!!

[Jillsy]

Afternoon Swaggers!

Some of you may have noticed that our Member numbers have decreased significantly over the past few days.  That's because I have gone through and deleted everyone who hadn't logged on to the Forum for 2 years or more and had 0 posts.  I have also deleted the accounts of people who requested I do so (I have left all of their posts on the Forum though).

If you are Members of other Forums or FB pages associated with your vehicles (eg LCOOL on the net) or your Camper Trailers (eg Kimberley Kamper Official Owners Group on FB), why not tell those Forum Members about Myswag.org?  It might help us add some fresh and ACTIVE Members to our already amazing group of Members.  Here is a copy of a blurb I put on three 200series Owners Groups on FB (I'm still a Member from when we had Ruby and Bruiser the Cruiser  )

If you happen to be own a Camper Trailer, please feel free to check out www.myswag.org - it’s an ad free Off-road Camper Trailer Forum. There’s a spot for you to brag about your 200 as well as a place to tell everyone all about your Camper Trailer. It has Members from all over Australia and has Member-written information regarding almost all things outdoor and camping related.  Go and check it out!!!

Feel free to copy and paste the above or make up your own little blurb.

[Fizzie]

Thanks Jillsy.

Could I suggest that it could also make mention of hard-floor, hard-roof, hard-wall Camper Trailers as well?

After all, some of us have upgraded!

[Jillsy]

Absolutely!!!

[Jeepers Creepers]

solve the problems of why all the good folks who have left could be a plan.

If you look at the statistics page, the forum as a whole has been in a huge decline for years.

And that, is based on cold hard facts and figures.

[WilSurf]

Thanks Jillsy.

Could I suggest that it could also make mention of hard-floor, hard-roof, hard-wall Camper Trailers as well?

After all, some of us have upgraded!

Aren't they called caravans? 

[DandyD]

I’d love to help but I can’t see many others joining from up here.

[Jillsy]

I’d love to help but I can’t see many others joining from up here.

 

Where about's in the UK are you? My Mum was from Yorkshire (Huddersfield)...

[DandyD]

Further south, near Banbury (not Bunbury).

 My wife is from Yorkshire.

[DannyG]

I know you guys have just done a massive clean out but Forums in general are having a bit of a slump at the moment.

Facebook has become the new active space for people to get info. But the info or quality of people you find on Facebook groups leave a lot to be desired on a lot of occasions.

So given time the people will come back to forums. Especially forums that are not over moderated but maintain a somewhat family friendly environment and have quality content. All of which Myswag has, hence its a successful forum and should easily last the test of time and come out the other side of this Facebook hit.

I have a forum that is Vehicle based, Ill give Myswag a mention on it, hopefully it'll create a few new active members.

[Mace]

I know you guys have just done a massive clean out but Forums in general are having a bit of a slump at the moment.

Facebook has become the new active space for people to get info. But the info or quality of people you find on Facebook groups leave a lot to be desired on a lot of occasions.

Very true Danny.

However the forum stats indicate that Myswag is experiencing an uplift in members, which is good.  Its a matter of converting them to active posters.



Facebook makes it easier for member to post their trip details up instead of having to upload images.  I would imagine that between the Forum and the Myswag FB site, the actual amount of member useage hasnt dropped of that much. COVID has also had an impact on personal trip report threads, IMO.

Cheers, Al.

[DandyD]

Just looking now, there are six registered users viewing the forum and 72 guests. Is there any way of prompting the guests to join?

[Jillsy]

Just looking now, there are six registered users viewing the forum and 72 guests. Is there any way of prompting the guests to join?

Will definitely check if they’d an option when we do the forum update Mate - good idea…

[grunf]

Very common practice on other forums is that advertising and inviting people to other sites is not allowed.
People who do that usually get banned. So we may rethink this strategy.

[nab]

Whenever someone asks me a bout camper trailers and which ones they should buy, I always give them 3 options - check out a camping show, hire one and check out Myswag. Facebook is pretty crap for info (good for Marketplace though), forums still hold technical info which is reasonable straight forward to find.

[Jillsy]

Very common practice on other forums is that advertising and inviting people to other sites is not allowed.
People who do that usually get banned. So we may rethink this strategy.

Definitely don't do it if it will get you into trouble!!!

[Jillsy]

Whenever someone asks me a bout camper trailers and which ones they should buy, I always give them 3 options - check out a camping show, hire one and check out Myswag. Facebook is pretty crap for info (good for Marketplace though), forums still hold technical info which is reasonable straight forward to find.

I do the same 

[Jillsy]

My wife is from Yorkshire.

Small world 

I know you guys have just done a massive clean out but Forums in general are having a bit of a slump at the moment.

Facebook has become the new active space for people to get info. But the info or quality of people you find on Facebook groups leave a lot to be desired on a lot of occasions. I agree - gosh there is some absolute tripe out there

So given time the people will come back to forums. Especially forums that are not over moderated but maintain a somewhat family friendly environment and have quality content. All of which Myswag has, hence its a successful forum and should easily last the test of time and come out the other side of this Facebook hit. Naww such lovely words 

I have a forum that is Vehicle based, Ill give Myswag a mention on it, hopefully it'll create a few new active members. Thank you!!!

COVID has also had an impact on personal trip report threads, IMO.

Absolutely.  I am looking forward to doing our trip report as we travel to and from (and including the National Meet) - 8 weeks worth of trip report 

[McGirr]

As a member that has arranged many trips in the group, forums have gone backward in a sense. Social media has the benefits for a number of reasons.

You can join groups related to brand or model of your car , camper, caravan etc.

Pictures can upload quicker no matter  the size of them.

Replies are simple and quick.

Social media groups have bigger audiences.

You don't have to scroll through endless topics to find things. Yes there is a search function and you can set up notifications but really you need to be on  tapatalk to get any quick notifications.

Personally I still hop on now and then but it's now out dated in sense and thats not going against foums as I have met some great friends from here. I also don't see anything that interests me anymore from the group sadly.

Mark

[Banjo16]

Have to agree with McGirr, the days of interesting trip reports are very few and far between, most things I see are unfortunately not related to the Forums title.

[paceman]

+2 with McGirr…

Most of my visits to the forum are out of habit now…

Older members that I enjoyed communicating with are gone or don’t frequent the forums either.

I’m going on a 10 day trip out to western Queensland in September, and don’t really see the need to compile trip reports… can’t see how it would be interesting to more than a couple of people at most.

Also, a lot of us have never met others on this forum and sometimes it can feel like an outsider looking in, with little groups within groups.

I have found the forum very useful over the years and have tried to pass on that help to others, but if I’m brutally honest, I think the forum is fading…

Hopefully YMMV…


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[duggie]

I have stated this before , the worst thing that has happened to Myswag is the Bookface site , people on Myswag are known by their user name , unlike bookface where you bookface profile is who you are . Just my 2 bobs worth .

[vern]

I have stated this before , the worst thing that has happened to Myswag is the Bookface site , people on Myswag are known by their user name , unlike bookface where you bookface profile is who you are . Just my 2 bobs worth .

Do people even use the Facebook page? It's very quiet, hardly ever see it in my feed

Sent from my SM-A526B using Tapatalk

[Pete79]

Forums in general are much, much better for people looking to get good, accurate or detailed information that may have been written many years ago, but is still correct and relevant.

Facebook is good for killing time, photos and quick answers (of questionable accuracy).

I signed up here when I was researching specific technical details for an upcoming trailer build I was planning. I read so many build threads, some that were up to 10 years old (or more). I read some threads many times and studied 100s of photos intently.
I didn’t need to ask many questions or comment on other peoples work while researching, I just took everything I needed from the threads that I liked.

To steal a phrase from annoying people at work, this is the forum’s “unique selling point”.
You can’t do that stuff on Facebook.

Over the years I took heaps of knowledge from this forum, not just for my build, but also camp oven cooking recipes and good spots to camp that I had never heard of before or had driven past and had no idea I missed them.

The biggest thing about forums is members contributing, so I tried to give back to this knowledge base as much as I could and documented as much of my build as possible.
I also tried to write as many trip reports as I could whenever we did something interesting or different.

But over the last couple of years that specific knowledge base/information input around off-road campers (or camping in general) has basically stopped in this site and as a result I’ve drifted away recently.

I still prefer forums over Facebook and float in and out of this forum from time to time, but there really isn’t much off-road based activity happening in here these days and to be honest I don’t feel that some of the side conversations are all that healthy sometimes either. I just don’t see much that engages me personally here anymore.

Having said all that, I truly hope this forum stays alive because there really is some great information hidden in these pages and maybe a few new members will spark up the camping and camper trailer side of this group.

Perhaps I’ll get inspired for another build one day and contribute more myself again.

[Spada]

I think it's mostly a sign of the times. 2 to 3 years ago most people were doing trips, there were organised Myswag group meets, and a few long term builds underway. Generally most the chatter was based around that and it held relevance to a lot of people.

Skip forward a bit and we were all in lock-down or severely restricted in where we could go & what we could do, and the general chit-chat lost some relevance as we all progressively went stir crazy.

With the cycle of life looping back around and members now starting to get back out & about, I suspect normal viewing will resume shortly. This forum has been a great source of info for a lot of people, but I see a few members from past that used to contribute quite a bit have gone real quiet. The user stats show that they are still logging in and reading quite regularly, but they're just not posting like they used to. I suspect thats because we've gone off-topic a bit (thanks to covid).

Winter will be over in a month or two, so maybe it's time to start thinking about having a few meet & greet weekends in some local campgrounds? That can be as simple as posting a campground that your going to and inviting people to come along and say hi. I have to say that I've met some great people through a few of the Brisbane area Myswag days/weekends that have been done in the past, which then created a personal link to the forum discussions and helps drive the conversation.

There is nobody on here that doesn't like camping, and I suspect many of us may have first heard about Myswag in a campground? so lets just get back out and around a campfire so we can chat face to face again 

[Fizzie]

Or I know of a backyard that has an awesome looking firepit & pizza oven ...