Tips to Boost Activity in Your Spokt Hub

Recently, we received a question from a new user asking how to better get his family members involved and participating in Spokt. Below is our response. What would you add?

Hello Ernie,

Reach out directly (whether that be through phone, email, or in person) to your family members, and tell them more about Spokt and how you hope what it can become for your family. To me, Spokt is like sitting in the living room and catching up with my family, but without having to travel all over the country to bring everyone together. When you find something you really enjoy, you want to share it with the people who mean the most to you. Sometimes, when people receive an invitation, they don’t know what they are being invited to. I’m as skeptical as anyone!

Another thing to get things rolling is to post some photos in your hub, ask some questions, post a poll. Try to get a conversation going and invite your family members to share. Ask someone to post photos from a recent vacation or graduation.

When you reach out to your family to tell them about Spokt it shows that you care about them, and want to stay connected. Then, when people see their invitation, they understand more about what Spokt is, and then be more inclined to join and participate. You can also send them a link to our demo hub, so they can get a feel for what Spokt is like!

Good luck!

It’s your turn, use the comments to help Ernie and others make their Spokt hubs more successful.

Thanks in advance!

23 thoughts on “Tips to Boost Activity in Your Spokt Hub”

  1. Larry Czarnik says:

    Katie,
    Well this is a great post and a great opportunity to give Spokt feedback as well. First, lets say thanks for all Spokt does. And thanks for allowing us to change the invite “text” or inclusion. However, someone we just sent an invite to sent it back to us and we noticed that it is not FROM us but from Spokt.com with a reply to of the email of the person sending the invite. Any way to change that? For example (may not be exact, but you know what I mean)

    Sender: noreply@spokt.com
    Reply-to:

    ——–

    Secondly, since we use Spokt as an online meeting place / discussion forum for a user group, we have prepared a brief presentation that walks a potential member through accepting the invite to logging in, a little “tour” of the hub (reading and posting) and of course logging out. If you’d like to have a look at it, let us know. I’ll have to check if it has any private.

    Was there such a “tour” of Spokt on your site? Don’t have time to check.
    Regards,
    Larry
    2015MY13 09:40

  2. HennyCarlisle says:

    It would help if we could post graphics in our comments.

    For instance birthday cards, which can be followed up by cards from other members.

    1. Katie says:

      Thanks for your suggestion! 🙂 I have passed your note along to the Product Team.

  3. Why can’t we view our Photos on a slide show on the Spokt web site.?

    1. Katie says:

      Hi Eugene! The reason you can’t view your photos as a slideshow is because we don’t offer that feature, but that is an interesting suggestion. I have passed your idea to the Product Team!

  4. Thank you Very much

  5. Roger says:

    Is there a way you could have “Recent Items” show all recent posts rather than only “new postings”?

    If one reads a new reply for example of a posting that has been on the site for some time and doesn’t have a chance to reply right away it can become very difficult to try to find it again to make a reply.

    I like the search feature for searching the entire site but it would also be nice if a search could be limited to photos or news items.

    1. Katie says:

      Thanks for the idea, Roger! I have notified the Product Team about this.

  6. Millie says:

    One of the ways we create interest and activity is to have photo contests occasionally. Someone suggests a topic (such as bridges, church buildings, red, freedom, Spring, etc). The one who suggests the topic is the administrator of that round. All photos are submitted to the admin by a designated date, who then posts all the pictures on the fam page. Pictures are posted anonymously (without the name of the person who submitted the photo). Then we create a poll and people have a designated amount of time (usually a week) to vote. The person who has submitted the winning photo gets to choose the topic for the next contest. Our one rule of thumb is that you have to have taken the photo yourself or be in the photo. But anyone wanting to create a photo contest can come up with their own rules.
    It’s fun and does create a burst of enthusiasm and participation.

    1. Katie says:

      Thanks, Millie! That is a great suggestion. 🙂

  7. Tom says:

    We are a very large and widespread family, and our extended family members have, so far, uploaded well over 9,000 family history photos and documents, with dates ranging from the earliest days of photography to the present. Many were originally uploaded to Ancestry’s MyFamily website (which stunned us all when it announced that the site was closing). We consider ourselves fortunate that you “rescued” these photos and migrated them to SPOKT. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

    Unfortunately, many of our family members that used to frequent the MyFamily website seem reluctant to embrace the SPOKT website, perhaps because at present, our hub has 128 “books,” Each with a variable number of “posts” that have been randomly uploaded. In the MyFamily configuration, we were able to sort the contents of any album (“book”) a couple different ways, such as by “title,” or alphabetically or in reverse alphabetical order, etc.

    As SPOKT is presently configured, navigating to any particular time period or individual’s photographs is, at present, a very daunting task. You have cleverly provided the capability of sorting all of the “books” alphabetically and/or as a list (many, many thanks). However, every photo or document within each “book” still appears in purely random order, neither alphabetical nor chronological. I strongly feel that navigation tasks could be greatly simplified if you could provide the capability of sorting the contents of each individual “book” in that same fashion (alphabetically and/or as a list). I also strongly feel that this feature would be very helpful in encouraging more family members to become involved and participating in SPOKT.

    1. Katie says:

      Thanks for your suggestions, Tom! Our Product Team has been notified. 🙂

  8. Riley says:

    Can I copy a letter from computer and past into NEWS section?

    1. Katie says:

      Hi, Riley! You sure can.

  9. Johnathan says:

    One way the Duncan clan keeps things moving is to offer a ‘QOTD’ (Question of the Day). We have set a limit of 5 questions with a possible ‘Bonus’ question as well. The topic can be anything from wardrobes to foods to cars to activities. This is a random thread started by random people at random times, but only one per day is allowed. Sometimes this thread goes on and on as people answer and comment to the questions. Other times it will die with just a few responses.

    Another way is we usually have a ‘MMM’ or Monday Morning Musings. We post about our weekends, the week ahead, and pretty much anything. You can do this on any day: (WWW, TTT, FFF, etc). Make up your own acronyms.

    1. Katie says:

      Thanks Jonathan, that sounds like a great idea!

  10. Millie says:

    Johnathan, I like that idea QOTD; and your MMM (Monday Morning Musings) make me think of our Flash Back Fridays. Facebook has their TBT (throw back Thursdays) so we created what we call Flash Back Fridays. We post old pictures with a caption such as ‘who, what, when, or where’ and let the family guess who the person is, where it was taken, when it was taken…….that sort of thing. We also had a poll as to what day of the week we wanted to do it and came up with:
    Monday Memories
    Tuesday’s Timely Trophies
    Wayback Wednesday
    Flash Back Fridays
    For us, Flash Back Fridays won. 🙂

  11. David Priest says:

    How do I do a poll? It says I need at least one option…how do I do that?

    1. Katie says:

      Hi, David! Could you contact Spokt Support (http://www.spokt.com/contact)? We will be able to help you much more efficiently. Thanks!

  12. Riley Loyd says:

    is there going to be a newsletter section going to be added?

    1. Dan says:

      Hi Riley, what would you expect in a newsletter section?

  13. John D says:

    Our family just started on Spokt. Love the comments above about sorting within books and slide shows. Those would be great features. When I open a book, I would like to be able to scroll through the pictures for just that book but the “Newer” and “Older” buttons take me out of the book.

    1. Dan says:

      Thanks for your feedback, our product team has been notified.

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