NEW IDEA for Hauntworld

[RJ Productions]

OK Guys, let’s look at the reason we all log onto Hauntworld and spend hours searching through all the Forum posts….information!! We all want to find that important tid bit that we can find useful.
So here’s an idea that I think can be useful and beneficial to all of us. As we all know Social Media is the one aspect of our businesses that we all need to focus on and develop. I remember Larry renting an entire room at Transworld to present his idea on how he wanted to develop Hauntworld when most haunts didn’t even know what a web site was! Boy was he right!
We all know that we need a Blog on our website (Google loves it) and we all need Social Media from Facebook to Twitter. What do they ALL need????? CONTENT! Everyone tells you that you can’t build an audience just posting the same thing…”come to our Haunt, it’s the BEST!” “We have the scariest Haunt in the tri state area”….bla bla bla…. Boring…not coming back to this site. We need content!
I have spent hours combing the internet looking for things to post. Then sometimes you run across things by accident and go “that’s cool…I should post that!”. So here’s the concept….
We create a depository, say somewhere we all go to anyway…like Hauntworld… where we can all post interesting articles we either run across or we write ourselves. Now everyone has access to it so they can pull and use the information for their OWN Blogs or Facebook posts!!! Instant CONTENT!!
If you find an article someone else has written, make sure you post the author’s name, give credit where credit is due!! (Legal aspects!) And if you write the article, you are the author and we make sure you get credit. Simple!
If we each post just one article a month, we ALL have access to a TON of content!!! Original content is great because it will be unique to us, but even an interesting article you run across on the internet or local newspaper or magazine will work. We basically create an “Associated Press” for the Haunt community!!!
So what do you think??? Larry can we create something like this on Hauntworld???
I’ll start things off…I’ll be posting an original article based on an idea I got reading a little Community Newsletter at a local sandwich shop while traveling in Canada!!!
Rich

[RJ Productions]

OK Here's the first POST

See if this works. Here is a quick article I just wrote about the SCREAM!!!

You can download it and post it to your own Blog or social media, just give the author the credit!!

Scream.txt

So who's next? You can write an article or just post a cool article you found on line. If a lot of us participate, it gives everyone pertinent CONTENT!!!

Rich

[Gore Galore]

create a new category

If this gets off the ground, I think it would be helpful if Larry created a new forum category for "Articles" so that way it is much easier to find the articles you are talking about posting.

[Dark Tiki Studios]

I think this is a great idea.

[cigsm]

The issue with doing this together for SEO purposes is that everyone in the group is essentially trying to rank for the same keywords + (state / city). Google will notice that and see it as duplicate content and penalize. For SEO to work it has to be ORIGINAL content of at least 300 words that has organic keywords and not keyword stuffed.


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[RJ Productions]

While this may help with SEO, and frankly a majority of the haunt owners here probably have no idea what you're talking about! The main purpose is to have content, period. Other aspects of your site and promotion can focus on that. When you do drive traffic to your site, facebook or other media outlets the only thing that will KEEP those people engaged and come back is CONTENT.

I don't care how cool a site is, if it has animation or it has all the necessay SEO info. All I want is information that I find interesting and/or useful.

So I am looking for Haunted house related content. Who better to provide it than haunt owners? And since we are ALL extremely busy, better off I write one piece and then I'm able to borrow from several of my colleagues! Saves us all time.

Every news station does this. See Jimmy Kimell show? He has done a segment showing the same report from like 10 different TV stations. It is the exact same dialog, each read by the different newscaster before showing the report. Every market assumes their local guys did the whole report.

We do the same thing. You can take the time to add any SEO info you want if you have the time. Or just run content and keep your audience engaged.

Am I the only ome who sees the value??

[drfrightner]

How about this one...

We are FINALLY LAUNCHING OUR ALL NEW ONLINE TICKETING SYSTEM... and we can set haunted houses up with ONLINE FULL PROOF system for ONLY .25 cents per ticket.

Interactive Ticking is .75 cents and I think almost every single ticketing company is 75 cents to 2 dollars... and we can do it for TWENTY FIVE CENTS PER TICKET.

You heard it right and yes I will be the very first haunted house using the system this Halloween.

I will post more details soon.

WHO WANTS TO CUT WHAT YOU PAY BY 66%?

Larry

[RJ Productions]

OK I started this thread LAST fall..maybe people were too busy getting ready for their season. Reactivating it to hopefully get some response!!

I know that now is the time I want to start being more active on my site and my social media. With only Halloween about 4 months away it's time to start the interest rolling.

So again I ask... anyone interested in providing articles, information, how-to's etc that we can all post to our site for content?? In essence we create our own AP (associated press). You can post original articles or links to haunt related articles. Other Haunters can use those articles to help add content to their own sites. Simple answer to the large question of "how do I create new and interesting content?" Now it was addressed earlier about SEO and the like. As stated you can take the basic article, add your own personal touches or local angles to better fit the article to your market. But the important point here is that you have a wider variety of content to help engage your audience without the problem of creating content several times a week (leaving more time to work on OTHER aspects of your attraction!!)

If you use Wordpress to create your site, you can actually schedule blog posts. There are sites like Hootsuite that allow you to schedule content across various platforms. If we have a Repository of Articles available, we can schedule content to keep communication open when we are the busiest trying to operate our attractions!!!

Face it ALL the TV stations and newspapers do the same thing. Do you think they sent their own crew across the country to interview the pitbull afraid of the cat??? Yet every TV station is playing the SAME video clip!! If it works for major media it can work for us!!

We just had Ghostbuster's Day June 8th. IF I would have known there are several angles that my audience would have been interested in! Here, a local TV station interviewed a Ghostbusters Club that makes appearances for charities.. it is a group that shows up at my haunt every year! We should have had articles ready that we could have posted on our own sites.

How about "How To's" ??? People who decorate for Halloween are surely candidates to attend a local Haunt!! Simple How to articles will get them involved and active. Put your local twist to it, have them submit pictures of their finished creations and you pick a winner to receive tickets to your haunt...or maybe a personal "Behind the Scenes Tour." You might even get coverage by your OWN local media!!

Haunt Vendors- provide articles that highlights the use of one or more of your products..or maybe a Home Haunt angle to better position the article? Again the local haunt can add how they utilize this same vendor in their own attraction.

IF you find a cool or offbeat article..provide a link. We can post the link in our article or use it as inspiration to write our own.

So let's get off our complacent back sides... get the ol creative juices flowing and start providing articles that we can ALL benefit from! With this talent pool, just ONE submission from each provides enough content to keep us all covered to December!!Maybe Larry will create a section for us as suggested, (instead of AP it can be HP-Hauntworld Press) but for now just start a thread "Haunt Articles". So who is first????

Rich

[Valley_of_Screams]

I have to ask...why? There's already so many good (and some better than Hauntworld ever could be) resources out there for people to enjoy providing this type of content. Why does something like this have to be on Hauntworld? There are facebook groups more active than these forums... -Tyler

[RJ Productions]

So Valley of Screams (you should sign your name to posts too so we know to address) do you have a suggestion? Just trying to make things easy. One source location where haunt owners can go to post and download content. I realize there are probably dozens of sites, but if I had time to search dozens of sites it defeats the original purpose, one location to save time! I do realize that this Forum has been a bit inactive, it IS the beginning of summer, but this is when we should be "getting busy"!! If there is a better location that will accomplish this, just name it and let's do this!

Rich

[Haunted Mansion]

I would love to see more articles. Thanks for posting Rich. Let see more.

[mindtumor]

So Valley of Screams (you should sign your name to posts too so we know to address) do you have a suggestion? Just trying to make things easy. One source location where haunt owners can go to post and download content. I realize there are probably dozens of sites, but if I had time to search dozens of sites it defeats the original purpose, one location to save time! I do realize that this Forum has been a bit inactive, it IS the beginning of summer, but this is when we should be "getting busy"!! If there is a better location that will accomplish this, just name it and let's do this!

Rich

He did sign it, or at least his name is on it now. To be fair I almost missed it too. In regards to the articles , I don't think it is a bad idea. Has anyone here used fiver? They write articles really cheap (along with other services). I can not speak to the quality but the site does exist.

[RJ Productions]

My bad

Yep,it'seems there... missed it! Sorry Tyler, thanks Jared! I always have to remember to sign mine , too.

Again I realize it's just June, but now is when we need to start generating content and driving traffic. Stuff like this is what we need to increase exposure and our audience, hence more money, but it always seems unless you have " scare" in the subject, no one pays attention. Then in November you wonder why your attendance is flat or down.

While there are other sites, this forum is probably frequented by more haunt owners than most. I'm not as much interested in haunt enthusiasts in this regard. I'd rather they go to MY site to get this kind of info than here.

Like the saying " many hands make light work" , many articles makes for diverse content (with less work!).

I posted one article, will look to post another soon so I practice what I preach. Would just like to see a few more "preachers"!!

Rich

[freak 'n' stein]

Pinterest pretty much does this exact thing. So much content, plus it links you to related things and generally won't let you double save a post. I follow plenty of boards and can get endlessly lost on Pinterest for hours. So simple. You can virtually save ANYTHING to Pinterest as long as your pins is public, anyone can see/follow. Don't fix what isn't broke hahaha

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[tonguesandwich]

Has to be original content for SEO. Only the first site that post the content or similar content will get ranking. Google algorithm will pick up even a single sentence. Copy and pasting can also get you penalized.