Young Composers Statistic Updates

I want to be transparent with this site's activity levels, so here is a graph of our stat history by month. Invision Board has the ability to post stats as far back as 2002 out of the box. With some tweaking, I probably could get the stats from 1997 +. The neat thing is that I was able to port over the entire Young Composers archive starting back in 1997 so we have stats of the history of the site starting from 2002.

You clearly can see the death of the site in 2004. The peak was around 2006 through 2007. 2008 through 2009 dropped in post count and remained steady. During 2009 until this date, we did lose considerable monthly post counts, and this is probably due to the changes. However I am noticing with the most recent change, activity is starting to increase little by little again. My main goal is to increase to the levels of 2007 x's many more.

Keep in mind that in the era of 2006 to 2007, we also had problems with quality of posts. I believe our quality of posting has greatly increased in these later years, at the expense of losing posting activity.

Nevertheless, Jay and I are working with the new staff to bring back Major Works, Teacher/Student Lessons, and Competitions as an initiative to increase our activity.

Nice chart.

Initial though: Instability breeds low membership. People will use a system that doesn't meet all their needs so long as the system doesn't change, and I think you've now got a pretty broad set of tools.

Though this would be more interesting with percentages of upload, discussion, and community forums to "even out" the lines, to try to discern what desires were being met at each peak.

I've attached a screenshot of the Adwords search traffic for the keyword you're best optimized for right now. That's not too shabby for something you rank well for, despite not taking full advantage of your target market (whatever that is). What do you see as the source of what's keeping you from getting the sign-ups and active posting you're looking for?

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Initial though: Instability breeds low membership.

Agreed... although that wasn't the issue in 2004.

Keep in mind that in the era of 2006 to 2007, we also had problems with quality of posts. I believe our quality of posting has greatly increased in these later years, at the expense of losing posting activity.

Yeah but we had quite the community :toothygrin:

Yeah but we had quite the community :toothygrin:

We did, and we will bring it back. Young Composers has always had its ups and downs, and this change I've been working on did stir things up, I'm aware of that. I do think we are regaining stability and control, and our weekly staff meetings are a step in the right direction.

I've attached a screenshot of the Adwords search traffic for the keyword you're best optimized for right now. That's not too shabby for something you rank well for, despite not taking full advantage of your target market (whatever that is). What do you see as the source of what's keeping you from getting the sign-ups and active posting you're looking for?

Changing from VBulletin to Invision was the first reason for the decreased posting activity, the updates were the second reason, possibly moving the forum to a subdomain contributed as well. However I noticed activity levels were dropping slightly, and stagnating even before the move. This is the reason why I updated the site, I'm trying to combat stagnation. I figured we would lose a bunch of activity at first, but hopefully it will shoot up after regaining stability.

Moving Young Composers into subdomains (the forum and wiki) has paid off though. We dominate the top 3 positions in Google for our trademark, and in Yahoo/Bing, we are at least 3 positions on the first page.

Yeah, but that's not how people search. I mean, I'm no expert, but I do know how my company works. Your internet branding doesn't matter unless it's something that people who are looking for your services search.

If you're relying on search results for new contacts, then you need to do deep SEO, not just branding. Don't forget that PPC advertising is another inexpensive option to bring people to the site.

I'd like to talk more about your marketing -- I'm a dumbass with nothing but failed and educating real-world experience, but I'm concerned that there hasn't been much thought into it.

Know that I'm not accusing, I just want to see this forum and community be what you want, so that the site runs well.

I actually work in an SEO company, but I don't have the time to be doing SEO unfortunately, my time is spent with functionality, and the staff. What are your SEO skills like? I'd consider hiring someone on this site to do some SEO for Young Composers if anyone is interested.