Zoints. I still dont get it.

[killa101]

Can someone explain to me the whole Zoints thing. What it does, how it works, how it benefits your site by being part of the network. I cant find any info on the Zoints website. I dont know if it is something worth adding to my community.

Thanks for your help,
Jordan

[Zoints]

Hi killa101,

Zoints Local adds personalized homepages, social networking, blogging, and tons of other stuff to your forum (everything is installed on your site). I just took a quick look at your paintball community, and it's awesome. I'm a forum owner myself so I understand the problems you face, which is why I founded Zoints. I want to help forum owners succeed because I think forums are the most important part of the internet. How does Zoints help you succeed?

1. As a forum owner, you need members. Whether you are just starting out or own a Big-Board, you need and want more members. By using Zoints Local you:

• Get listed in our directory which we advertise quite a bit and sees natural traffic
• Get listed on on our tag pages. For example, since your forum is about paintball, one of the tags you would enter to describe your forum would be "paintball" and you would be listed here. Not only are people experiencing nice traffic from those pages, but they are highly relevant inbound links from a reputable source which is great for SEO.
• With Zoints Local, your members generate a TON of new content for you via profile pages, comments, blogs, etc. That means more search engine results for people to find you.
• Your members (unless they opt out) get listed in our global search engine. People are starting to see a lot of traffic from this search engine as people search for other people.
• And the list goes on and will only get longer

2. Great, you got the members! But now you need to keep them around. Most forums see less than 20% of their members login on a monthly basis. That's not good. Just think how amazing your forum could be if you doubled the number of members logging in on a monthly basis? Whereas forums see less than 20% of people logging in, social networks like Facebook brag about ~90% of their members logging in. Social networks are much more "sticky". By adding the Zoints Local software to your forum, you create a niche social network. You would have a paintball social network. How cool would that be? But more importantly, due to the increased member interaction (comments and such) your members are much more likely to keep coming back to your site.

3. Not all, but most forum owners want to make a few dollars from their forum. Whereas forums sell for x times revenue, social networks valuation is based upon members (current research shows $23-$90.00 per member). Adding a social networking component to your forum increases its value. And of course that increased traffic means more ad impressions for you.

To summarize, Zoints Local:

Is free
Is fully installed on your forum
Increases member acquisition
Increases member retention
Increases value

If you have any other questions, I'd be happy to answer them

[killa101]

Ok I think I got it now. It definitely sounds interesting and I am looking for ways to sticky members so this might be of some help. Thanks for clearing things up for me, i'll check this out more on the weekend and maybe ill have some other questions for you then .

[Zoints]

Sounds good I'm happy to help with any questions or concerns you might have.

[kronikdj]

hey forgive my ignorance, i'm still new to zoints. So if I wanted to turn my homepage into a community blog it can be done with zoints local? I dont care much for some of the modules, however the blog and network i'm interested in.

[Alfa1]

moved this post to the main zoints local thread.

[Zoints]

Originally Posted by kronikdj

hey forgive my ignorance, i'm still new to zoints. So if I wanted to turn my homepage into a community blog it can be done with zoints local? I dont care much for some of the modules, however the blog and network i'm interested in.

Can you please elaborate more on what you mean by "Community blog" please? For example, you want your members to be able to write in their blogs and then have it show on the front page of your site? Or? Once I have a little more feel for what you're trying to accomplish I can give a better answer.

[0ptima]

What are the age demographics of zoint members?

[Zoints]

Originally Posted by 0ptima

What are the age demographics of zoint members?

In the end, it doesn't matter, because Zoints Local is entirely installed on YOUR forum. Therefore, your mini, niche social network has the demographics of your forum.

But for curiosity sake, 76.73% of the members on Zoints.com itself are 18 or older. Due to the extreme diversity of the forums interconnecting with Zoints, we have a much more mature audience than most networks.

[kronikdj]

Originally Posted by DChapman

Can you please elaborate more on what you mean by "Community blog" please? For example, you want your members to be able to write in their blogs and then have it show on the front page of your site? Or? Once I have a little more feel for what you're trying to accomplish I can give a better answer.

I basically want to turn my site into a blog host that integrates with vB. Right now my url us www.xxxxxxx.ca/forums, and the homepage is currently blank.