CivFanatics social media survey

[The_J]

Next year the forum will be turning a quarter of a century old, and we are happy that we are still going strong .
We are also going with the times, and have been active on social media, on some platforms longer, on some platforms shorter.
Now we would like to know how much overlap we actually have between the forum population, and our social media followers, as this can be hard to gauge.
Right now we are active on:

• Facebook https://www.facebook.com/civfanatics
• Instagram https://www.instagram.com/civfanatics/
• Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/civfanatics/?rdt=48807
• Mastodon https://mstdn.games/@civfanatics

(in case you wonder about Twitter, please check here)
Could you please show us in the poll in how far you currently interact with us on any of the platforms?

Could you also please let us know here in the thread if you find the news okay which we share on the social media platforms, as well as on our homepage https://www.civfanatics.com , or if we should change the frequency or what news we share there? We are also trying to increase our reach there, and obviously better content will help with this.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The poll is missing "I use social media but don't follow CFC at all" and "I didn't know you had some of these, and won't follow."

I don't mind giving CFC a like if that would help, but I'm fairly busy on FB as it is, with political, gaming, and writing groups.

I don't have a Twitter account and won't be getting one. I've read Reddit a little but haven't bothered posting. I don't do Discord or Instagram.

Honestly, since I'm here every single day and post nearly every single day, I don't see any reason to interact on other sites. Besides which, my FB identity isn't the same as my username here. I'd prefer to keep them separate.

 

[Broken_Erika]

CFC is my Social Media site

 

[Blake00]

Just to add to this our social media pages are purely for news posting and aren't discussion groups (other than article comments) as obviously we want everyone coming here to the forums for that. However we're curious to see how many people follow our news articles and where they get it from as we try to share all the best Civ related news to many places now.

 

[Chefofrats]

As a human rights, privacy and personal data protection advocate, I do not use any social media and I never will. I much prefer old-school forums, which generally do not treat me and my data as commodities, do not use as many invasive tracking technologies, and do not try to shove content and interactions into my face.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Just to add to this our social media pages are purely for news posting and aren't discussion groups (other than article comments) as obviously we want everyone coming here to the forums for that. However we're curious to see how many people follow our news articles and where they get it from as we try to share all the best Civ related news to many places now.

I guess I just assumed that whatever Civ-related news comes along, you and the rest of the staff will tell us here.

 

[fy00sh]

I'd probably follow if you guys had a tumblr blog since thats the only social media that i use, but i imagine im in the vast minority on that

 

[s.bernbaum]

I don't use social media at all. I consider them places to get your personal info stolen, get hacked, and get harrassed. I block all social media sites and have my email set to auto-delete anything that comes from any of them. I also use software that audits all incoming data to my computer and have it set to block anything from social media sites.

 

[The_J]

I guess I just assumed that whatever Civ-related news comes along, you and the rest of the staff will tell us here.

Normally it is so that we try to post the same things on the main page and on the social media channels, and all of these news items should get a thread somewhere in the forum.
So yes, all the info is here. The forum is our heart.

I'd probably follow if you guys had a tumblr blog since thats the only social media that i use, but i imagine im in the vast minority on that

We don't really have more capacity for more platforms at the moment, I'm afraid.

 

[Synobun]

Utility wise, I'm not sure how a CFC presence on social media fits within the, uh, "zeitgeist" of how social media functions. There's nothing that CFC outputs that really belongs on a website like Instagram or Twitter; most of what you can share are news pieces from other sites about Civ-related things, since CFC itself does not create that content. Then you run into the issue where a person would just follow that account instead, since there's no value added by the middleman there.

I realize the logic behind having the presence: "People are on social media now, so we should be as well so we can get people to click through to the forum." I'm just not sure how best to do that in a way that actually provides value to a follower. Highlighting mods (as in, for the games) could be interesting, but could also run into issues of favouritism. Giveaways? Pretty high cost, and if CFC doesn't pay, then there's significant labour involved in negotiating with the companies that are offering the product.

Do we know of any forums that have a successful social media presence? How do they run their accounts?

 

[The_J]

since CFC itself does not create that content. Then you run into the issue where a person would just follow that account instead, since there's no value added by the middleman there.

I realize the logic behind having the presence: "People are on social media now, so we should be as well so we can get people to click through to the forum." I'm just not sure how best to do that in a way that actually provides value to a follower. Highlighting mods (as in, for the games) could be interesting, but could also run into issues of favouritism. Giveaways? Pretty high cost, and if CFC doesn't pay, then there's significant labour involved in negotiating with the companies that are offering the product.

You can check our home page (in case it comes up again, the server is a bit unreliable at the moment), but we currently share our own content, which is the "Game Of The Month", results of the "Hall Of Fame", sometimes mods, other special efforts from within the forum, and we did also run 3 different raffles/give-aways here in the forum and in parallel on social media.

We also put in news from Civ, other at least somewhat related games, and sometimes remotely related, but still relevant pieces there.
Obviously we'd prefer that people just use the forum. But it's a way to make people aware that the forum exists.

Do we know of any forums that have a successful social media presence? How do they run their accounts?

TBH no idea how others are running it. I didn't see anyone on Twitter at the time.
We do consider out social media presence to be succesful though. On Twitter and FB we have more than 5000 people following, and a considerable amount of people on Reddit too.

 

[Synobun]

We do consider out social media presence to be succesful though. On Twitter and FB we have more than 5000 people following, and a considerable amount of people on Reddit too.

Does Xenforo have link tracking for inbound traffic? Or the server host? Do you know how much of that translates to tangible engagement? The subreddit, for example, gets fewer than 10 upvotes per post, and no comments, so on there the engagement is low, but maybe there's decent click-thru?

(I vaguely feel like these questions come across as challenging, but I mean them earnestly.)

 

[The_J]

Does Xenforo have link tracking for inbound traffic? Or the server host?

We do have google analytics... I guess that would be tracked ... I need to check if there is an overview.

Do you know how much of that translates to tangible engagement? The subreddit, for example, gets fewer than 10 upvotes per post, and no comments, so on there the engagement is low, but maybe there's decent click-thru?

The engagement is indeed not very tremendous in most cases, but we seem to get good feedback on Facebook.
We don't know why this is as it is though .

(I vaguely feel like these questions come across as challenging, but I mean them earnestly.)

I indeed had the feeling, so thanks for clarifying .

 

[Blake00]

Utility wise, I'm not sure how a CFC presence on social media fits within the, uh, "zeitgeist" of how social media functions. There's nothing that CFC outputs that really belongs on a website like Instagram or Twitter; most of what you can share are news pieces from other sites about Civ-related things, since CFC itself does not create that content. Then you run into the issue where a person would just follow that account instead, since there's no value added by the middleman there.

I guess that's why I got the job as where some see no value I see lots of opportunity mate. The_J is very on top of all the latest Civ news whereas my area is more retro stuff and showcasing mod projects & fan spinoffs/remakes (which I was doing on my own site/blog/youtube for many years before coming here) so we make a good team that ensures there's something for everyone and the news never really stops haha. I've seen it so many times now where there's a awesome fan project getting next to no attention and the dev is on the verge of giving up thinking no one cares, we find it, share it around putting thousands of eyes on it and next thing they know they're getting players & helpers pouring in.. and as for us, you'd be surprised how often the 'middleman' picks up a follow and signup when we share something people enjoy.

Does Xenforo have link tracking for inbound traffic? Or the server host? Do you know how much of that translates to tangible engagement? The subreddit, for example, gets fewer than 10 upvotes per post, and no comments, so on there the engagement is low, but maybe there's decent click-thru?

A lot of our Reddit posts get cross-shared to other Civ groups where the likes and comments happen so a lot of the post engagement doesn't end up in our own page stats. When we took over the group a year and half ago it had 71 people in it and no posts (other than some from me about my Civ2 mods) in years, but has now grown to 1033 members due to our news sharing so the engagement is slowly getting better as the group grows.

And yes as The_J says we get much bigger engagement on Facebook but I'd largely put that towards 2 reasons - 1 it's a much older/bigger group with 5.5K members, and 2 I half suspect more people look at their homepage/follow feed on FB then they do on Reddit.

 

[Ita Bear]

I use no social media due to its privacy and personal data risks, not to mention its effects on mental health and emotional well-being. This forum is virtually the only place I "socialise" online.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[Snowygerry]

Same here yes, this is as social as I am likely to get in cyberspace

I do check the homepage sometimes, and read the articles there, tnx.

 

[WildWeazel]

I checked "...but I check the homepage for news" but I actually mean "...but I subscribe to the homepage RSS feed for news"

Unsurprisingly, there seems to be a deep divide between active social media and forum users.

 

[The_J]

I am a bit surprised... or maybe not... I don't know.
I thought most people would be on social media... but then again, people who use forums, maybe that is just often a different kind of population .

 

[Ordnael]

I am a bit surprised... or maybe not... I don't know.
I thought most people would be on social media... but then again, people who use forums, maybe that is just often a different kind of population

We are CivFanatics...not FortniteFanatics... or whatever the kids are playing these days. All fine as long as they stay off my lawn

Moderator Action: Edited your post to remove inappropriate language without changing context. leif

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We do have google analytics...

I would like to propose that you look into an alternative product, Matomo. They have a comparable offering with their own Tag Manager and Analytics products that work quite similarly (there is even an import utility to bring your existing Google Analytics data into Matomo), but with a fundamentally different goal: Google wants to organise the world's information on behalf of its high-paying customers (you will never be one of those high-paying customers) as well as for their own, secret agenda, and Google just "lets" you get a small portion of the information that it collects about people in its comprehensive profiles in exchange for you feeding data on your users to Google. Matomo doesn't care about building profiles and can allow your conscience not to be guilty at the end of the day.

Matomo has multiple installation options for your own cloud server, including using a Docker Container, and there is no charge for Matomo (beyond the cost of paying for your own cloud server).

One spot for reliable and privacy-friendly hosting is to check out the numerous providers found at this link:

Choose the EU Cloud

EU cloud hosting alternatives to AWS, Azure, GCP, and others

www.eucloud.tech

Read more about Matomo:

Goodbye, Google Analytics, hello Matomo!

This blog has been using Google Analytics (GA) to track visitors[1] since pretty much the beginning. Mostly because it’s free, and I knew how to use it since I’ve been using it professionally for clie

johan.driessen.se

Matomo On-Premise (self-hosted) - Installation & Maintenance - Matomo Analytics

matomo.org

Requirements for Matomo On-Premise - On-Premise - Matomo Analytics Platform

matomo.org

What is PII? Learn how to not process PII with Matomo

What does PII mean? Be GDPR compliant and learn how to not process Personally Identifying Information (PII) with Matomo Analytics.

matomo.org

Matomo also offers a paid option of hosting your data, but it appears that they have delegated this hosting task to a Surveillance Capitalist provider called Amazon, and thus you are better off hosting your own instance of Matomo.


In addition to Matomo, there are other analytics options:

Website analytics

List of EU providers of website analytics

www.eucloud.tech

Given the responses in this thread, it does appear that there are a number of people in our community who are aware of these data-privacy issues and would prefer that a more privacy-friendly option get used.


As for the home page, I do greatly appreciate the effort that gets put into keeping it up-to-date with relevant games and news from these forums.