Building a solid group of active or interested users

07 June 2019 _____

Update 08-Jun-2019: Thanks to the many of you who just introduced friends to SPREAD.  It's very easy with options:

• 'Invite a Friend' feature - which goes on file as your helping us help the industry
• 'Forward the Discussion' feature
• Just forward the alert email that you receive, along with a few words of introduction

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06-Jun-2019:

Dear all

We are making good (and slow) progress as we work through our membership list to:

• Determine who is still interested in being a member
• Who has perhaps moved on and their membership email address is out of date; for each and every member, we conduct a search on LINKED-In and/our use of network to locate them
• Update each person's profile
• Where requested, inactivate the membership

So far, the membership has dropped by about 50, mainly people who have retired, no longer interested or we have not been able to locate.  We allow about 10 days to respond to our "request-to-see-if-your're-still-interested", and then - if no reply - we inactivate the account.

It has been pleasing to see how many people enjoy reading the discussions, although they may not feel best placed to write a response.

You may not realise, but I have been personally screening every applicant (we reject 10-20% of all applications; after contacting the individual and checking profiles such as Linked-IN).  I also moderate every discussion, often changing the grammar and/or putting the post on hold until the originator has helped make the request or response more clear.

Typically, we remove email contact details, to encourage ALL members to benefit from the interaction.

1. We have a student section, whose posts (currently) do not get sent out in email alerts.  However, we are thinking of changing that, so that the "next-generation" feel more included.
2. We have built a 'Private Section' where fee-paying clients can ring-fence discussions within a particular group.  For the companies that do not already have their own internal networks-of-best-practice, we believe this would be a really cost-effective option.
3. We have advertising platforms, largely used for SPREAD (David Messler is a regular for his Fluids Training Courses) but we will also accept advertorial blogs on our other platform, drillers.com
4. All blogs and SPREAD discussions are heavily syndicated on Social Media.  This ensures widespread audiences and also raises the profile of the contributor.

It would be good to hear what current members think about this.

Please consider this discussion a 'poll' of user attitudes as well as an opportunity to contribute to non-technical discussion.

Best regards

Dave

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Update 08-Jun-2019: Thanks to the many of you who just introduced friends to SPREAD.  It's very easy with options:

• 'Invite a Friend' feature - which goes on file as your helping us help the industry
• 'Forward the Discussion' feature
• Just forward the alert email that you receive, along with a few words of introduction

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