Promoting Alizee / AAm

[Shepherd]

What Alizee is going through right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulvmejwK1tc

[Shepherd]

I believe I saw somewhere that Alizee's due date was 15 November. Possibly Scruffy posted that. I can't be sure.

[Kajue]

Something I wrote in Falls thread about using the platform Discord, which can be accessed here: http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/show...677#post271677

"I know there is still a general incentive on this forum to promote Alizée here in the US, as well as wish that Alizée should've been marketed more here in the US. Although it may seem pretty much hopeless at this point, I think a Discord server could be a major factor in making this happen.

If enough of the fanbase were to join the server I believe we could be able to organize pretty large campaigns targeting a US audience. Discord is primarily a messaging app, which you can access through the computer as a site, and through your phone as an app. You get instant notifications, just like giant sized SMS group chat. I think this could provide us the "Ease of Communication" which a forum doesn't really provide, to work on big collaborations and campaigns.

We could use the Discord to organize, maybe a crowdfund internationally (Patreon, GoFundMe, etc.) in order to be able to have the funds to promote Alizée, and the forum on the various social media sites (using targeted niche Facebook Ads, Instagram Promos, etc.) and for the Funds to be able to keep THIS site going, as well as money to go into making new improvements to the site itself.



IDK, I'm just being a idealistic youth. But hey, if there's a will, there is a way I guess."

Definitely far fetched but, it's something. I do some "dropshipping" on the side so I know a teeny bit about promoting something.

I dunno, might just be me being young and dumb.

But do you you all think?

[Ben.Daly]

Originally Posted by Kajue

Something I wrote in Falls thread about using the platform Discord, which can be accessed here: http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/show...677#post271677

"I know there is still a general incentive on this forum to promote Alizée here in the US, as well as wish that Alizée should've been marketed more here in the US. Although it may seem pretty much hopeless at this point, I think a Discord server could be a major factor in making this happen.

If enough of the fanbase were to join the server I believe we could be able to organize pretty large campaigns targeting a US audience. Discord is primarily a messaging app, which you can access through the computer as a site, and through your phone as an app. You get instant notifications, just like giant sized SMS group chat. I think this could provide us the "Ease of Communication" which a forum doesn't really provide, to work on big collaborations and campaigns.

We could use the Discord to organize, maybe a crowdfund internationally (Patreon, GoFundMe, etc.) in order to be able to have the funds to promote Alizée, and the forum on the various social media sites (using targeted niche Facebook Ads, Instagram Promos, etc.) and for the Funds to be able to keep THIS site going, as well as money to go into making new improvements to the site itself.



IDK, I'm just being a idealistic youth. But hey, if there's a will, there is a way I guess."

Definitely far fetched but, it's something. I do some "dropshipping" on the side so I know a teeny bit about promoting something.

I dunno, might just be me being young and dumb.

But do you you all think?

You raise a good talking point Kajue.

It's inevitable that people will leave AAm and/or the fan base as a whole for a variety of reasons, so it's important that new fans continue to arrive. I've said before that there will always be at least a few people coming in every now and then simply by stumbling upon Alizée, usually on YouTube. That random magic of the YT algorithm will hopefully always be there, and there are some other organic ways people will discover her. People can also turn friends/family into fans.

We need to find ways of promoting her that don't feel forced or desperate. It's a very difficult thing to do, especially when targeting an English audience.

I mean, pitching Alizée as something to be excited about is a bit of a difficult one especially if you're only talking in person to someone. You say to someone that she's a singer, fine, but she speaks French, and is nearly 20 years past her peak popularity, it becomes a bit more difficult to explain.

But regardless, it is something we need to think about.

[Kajue]

Originally Posted by Ben.Daly

You raise a good talking point Kajue.

It's inevitable that people will leave AAm and/or the fan base as a whole for a variety of reasons, so it's important that new fans continue to arrive. I've said before that there will always be at least a few people coming in every now and then simply by stumbling upon Alizée, usually on YouTube. That random magic of the YT algorithm will hopefully always be there, and there are some other organic ways people will discover her. People can also turn friends/family into fans.

We need to find ways of promoting her that don't feel forced or desperate. It's a very difficult thing to do, especially when targeting an English audience.

I mean, pitching Alizée as something to be excited about is a bit of a difficult one especially if you're only talking in person to someone. You say to someone that she's a singer, fine, but she speaks French, and is nearly 20 years past her peak popularity, it becomes a bit more difficult to explain.

But regardless, it is something we need to think about.

One idea I use is the use of trending and popular hashtags. In Alizée's case, we could use POPULAR hashtags relating to music here in the US and worldwide. This generates a ton of organic traffic for an Instagram page. Another thing to note is that the Instagram algorithm promotes pages that post at least 4 times a day.

I see alot of Alizée fanpages on Instagram, that dont get the traffic they deserve because they are utilizing this strategy.

I've used this strategy for some of my accounts, I made a account on Instagram related to Exercise about 2 weeks ago, and I now I'm already at around 1000 followers just with organic traffic, and my insights show me I'm reaching about 30K accounts PER DAY.

I think this would be a good place to start marketing her, which is why I include those hashtags in my new Alizee fanpage. No cost, but people see it.

[AlizéeSuperFanFIN]

I still haven’t - I have to admit - "had time" to join the Discord page.

-Can anyone tell me how active it is now?

And what about the current situation in America... Apparently mainly youtube brings new fans from there to the realm of Alizée......

An interesting topic though! How to break through the "new continent" if mostly just fans trying to get awareness through!

[CleverCowboy]

Originally Posted by Kajue

We could use the Discord to organize, maybe a crowdfund internationally (Patreon, GoFundMe, etc.) in order to be able to have the funds to promote Alizée, and the forum on the various social media sites (using targeted niche Facebook Ads, Instagram Promos, etc.) and for the Funds to be able to keep THIS site going, as well as money to go into making new improvements to the site itself.

The topic of updating this site comes up every so often, especially after a crash like we experienced. There was a point where we thought we might have to shut the site down. New members were few and far between, Alizee was not making any news, and when she became pregnant we thought she might disappear from the public's eye, similar to what happened with Annily. Our fears did not materialize and new members started coming on and Alizee continues with her career, so this site will live on. It just needs a serious facelift.

Just about all the members involved in the upgrade conversation before wanted to update the landing page. Currently it has a picture of Alizee during the DALS era, so yeah, pretty aged. We didn't understand why we couldn't do at least that, but Ben had explained the reasons. The next idea was to create a new forum, but saving the history we have in here was very important.

I did some research back then about the newest version of vBulletin. This site runs version 3.8.4. The most recent version for vBulletin is 5.x.x. There are some very good improvements. It turns out that vBulletin itself has servers to host vBulletin sites at very reasonable prices. I got in contact with one of their representatives and got some questions answered.

Here were the advantages of hosting on the vBulletin servers:

1. They were inexpensive.
2. They would migrate our historical data to the new platform at no cost.
3. There would be no need to perform any maintenance or upgrades. As long as we use them as a host, our forum would always be up to date with the new versions as they come out.
4. We would be able to add language packs to the site.
5. Many new and improved modern features.


There were some disadvantages, the big one being that customization is limited. They don't allow third party products on their servers, so adding a chat box would not be allowed and they don't have a native chat box. The chat box was important to a lot of members.

The other option was to get a backup of this site, purchase the latest version of vBulletin, and try to figure out how to migrate the data ourselves. We could add all the add-ins we want and make the site as rich in content as we liked. We would have a choice to host wherever we wanted. However, there would be the initial cost of vBulletin, which is over $200, and an investment of many hours of work.

With the topic of Discord that came up, it is pretty much a fancy chat box from what I was told. For those preferring that kind of interaction, it might be a good option. For myself, there are so many hours in a day and a hefty chunk of those hours are spent staring at a computer screen for my work. The time I spend on this site is set aside from what I have left in my day. I personally would not have the time to be engaged in chat. I have cut my social media presence in a big way to have time to do other things and to not spend hours staring at my phone after hours of staring at my computer monitor. So a platform like Discord doesn't interest me so much and will remain committed to improving the forum. I wouldn't like to see our current members get split up, but if it happens then both sides will have to work on regrowing their membership roles.

[Ben.Daly]

Originally Posted by CleverCowboy

I wouldn't like to see our current members get split up, but if it happens then both sides will have to work on regrowing their membership roles.

That's something to consider. I don't think it would be a huge problem though, as I think most if not all people already using AAm would continue to do so, it's just that a few would also use Discord on top of it.

[Kajue]

Originally Posted by Ben.Daly

That's something to consider. I don't think it would be a huge problem though, as I think most if not all people already using AAm would continue to do so, it's just that a few would also use Discord on top of it.

I definitely will not stop using this site.

[Scruffydog777]

Originally Posted by CleverCowboy

The topic of updating this site comes up every so often, especially after a crash like we experienced. There was a point where we thought we might have to shut the site down. New members were few and far between, Alizee was not making any news, and when she became pregnant we thought she might disappear from the public's eye, similar to what happened with Annily. Our fears did not materialize and new members started coming on and Alizee continues with her career, so this site will live on. It just needs a serious facelift.

Just about all the members involved in the upgrade conversation before wanted to update the landing page. Currently it has a picture of Alizee during the DALS era, so yeah, pretty aged. We didn't understand why we couldn't do at least that, but Ben had explained the reasons. The next idea was to create a new forum, but saving the history we have in here was very important.

I did some research back then about the newest version of vBulletin. This site runs version 3.8.4. The most recent version for vBulletin is 5.x.x. There are some very good improvements. It turns out that vBulletin itself has servers to host vBulletin sites at very reasonable prices. I got in contact with one of their representatives and got some questions answered.

Here were the advantages of hosting on the vBulletin servers:

1. They were inexpensive.
2. They would migrate our historical data to the new platform at no cost.
3. There would be no need to perform any maintenance or upgrades. As long as we use them as a host, our forum would always be up to date with the new versions as they come out.
4. We would be able to add language packs to the site.
5. Many new and improved modern features.


There were some disadvantages, the big one being that customization is limited. They don't allow third party products on their servers, so adding a chat box would not be allowed and they don't have a native chat box. The chat box was important to a lot of members.

The other option was to get a backup of this site, purchase the latest version of vBulletin, and try to figure out how to migrate the data ourselves. We could add all the add-ins we want and make the site as rich in content as we liked. We would have a choice to host wherever we wanted. However, there would be the initial cost of vBulletin, which is over $200, and an investment of many hours of work.

With the topic of Discord that came up, it is pretty much a fancy chat box from what I was told. For those preferring that kind of interaction, it might be a good option. For myself, there are so many hours in a day and a hefty chunk of those hours are spent staring at a computer screen for my work. The time I spend on this site is set aside from what I have left in my day. I personally would not have the time to be engaged in chat. I have cut my social media presence in a big way to have time to do other things and to not spend hours staring at my phone after hours of staring at my computer monitor. So a platform like Discord doesn't interest me so much and will remain committed to improving the forum. I wouldn't like to see our current members get split up, but if it happens then both sides will have to work on regrowing their membership roles.

I've expressed some thoughts in the moderators forum which is only viewable to mods. My thoughts that I expressed yesterday were that we just continue this site for as long as we can if Ben is willing.

I see though that CleverCowboy had put a lot of thought into this matter and if he wants to do the ground work which could be quite involved, I will support him in his efforts and financially.

I admit I know little about Discord. CleverCowboy has the opinion that it's no more than a fancy chatbox and I'm sure he's right, so Discord in itself could not replace our forum. Maybe if we started another site that didn't allow chat, we could have a link to Discord that would allow us to express thoughts we wouldn't normally put in a thread. That doesn't really seem to be a good solution but I'm willing to discuss all options.

As far as Discord, if members here want to start a site there, I see no harm in it. Another site possibly drawing more Alizee fans for her is a good thing and I now feel an Alizee America Discord site would probably not be a threat to our forum.