Ok, this is a rather provocative title and I think I need to clarify it a bit.
I am not promoting the idea of stealing content.
This is stupid and you will get punished for it.
However if you are running a website or starting a new one think about websites you visit often and which you like. Ask yourself the following questions:
- What do they have that you like?
- What do they have what you DON’T like?
- Why are you revisiting them that often?
- What idea of theses websites could you implement into your own website?
- What could you make different to become better?
- What are your competitors doing?
Whenever I surf the web and find something that I really like (an Idea, a gimmick, a tool, etc.) I make a note of it and think about how this could benefit my websites.
The beauty of HTML is that it is no secret. So if some website has a fancy looking widget check how they are doing it and if it fits your website implement it.
That is what I meant with “don’t reinvent the wheel”.
I write this post because yesterday I was checking my favorite hardware shop and they had this new fancy side menu which I instantly loved.
At first I was just curious how they did it and after spending around 6 hours of trial and error I build myself the same thing.
Now my German medical forum has a new fancy side menu which gives my visitors a more easy way of accessing important functions in my community.
Why do you have only twitter for your forum? No facebook, no google+? It's not popular in Germany?
No one wants to advertise that he/she has a sickness to his/her friends ;) Twitter at least brings in the crawling bots when publishing links
But for facebook, if you have only a fan page, people can like it, it's a forum about all health issues, it's not a forum about cancer patients or aids patients for instance...
Also you can have a software send your rss feed to your facebook fan page wall, it's not so much to have activity on the page itself..
It's just another useless think, such as twitter, for people to get new posts, if they don't use twitter or rss feeds..
But I get your point, and honestly it's some work for nothing..
And those who register mostly ask a question and leave.
The once that stay and help are a small group compared to the rest, however so far they get the work done.
I don't think that starting a FB Fan Page would bring in any benefits (for my users or me) compared to the work I had to put in it and to maintain it.
So I leave it for now :)