Monthly Spotlight - Permitting Talk

[Katrina]

Welcome to our September Edition of The Monthly Spotlight! From time to time we will be spotlighting a forum or blog in order to allow the FP community to be introduced to new sites or get reacquainted with existing sites. We are excited to announce October's Spotlight!

@EchoRomeo ​

Permitting Talk​

We invite members to visit Permitting Talk and join up! 🙂
In this thread take the opportunity to ask @EchoRomeo
questions about the site or make comments on it!

@EchoRomeo, what prompted you to come up with such an unusual forum concept?

Thanks for being a part of Forum Promotion!​

​

 

[EchoRomeo]

Thanks @Katrina - wow it's an honor to be in the spotlight!

What prompted me to start Permitting Talk? Well, I work as a federal regulator (*pending possible gov shutdown, lol) and as such am constantly working at the intersection of rules/regulations, office practices, consultants, and the everyday people whose livelihoods are affected by the system. In gov permitting there can be a lot of knowledge that's not written down anywhere and that you really only obtain through firsthand experience, especially interpersonal kinds of knowledge, e.g., how particular permitting staff are interpreting requirements. Other times this knowledge can be relatively complex, e.g., what procedures need to be followed or what sorts of technical information needs to be collected. Whatever the case, I've gotten the sense over the years that if we just had more of a culture of people talking and sharing notes with each other, we could all be more effective and less frustrated by the pitfalls that the process often entails.

Permit applicants often hire consultants for this kind of knowledge/experience but I think many of the same kinds of benefits can be realized by just building more of a community around the whole enterprise. For example, why hire a computer programmer if you know a little about programming and can find solutions by asking others online or by researching past answers (as I've done many times myself)? The same holds true for permitting...ideally people should be able to rely more on each other and less on experts, including agency staff, to understand what they need to do to effectively navigate bureaucracy.

So I created Permitting Talk to help try and create such a community! One thing I have learned is that starting a forum really is hard work and obviously not everyone suddenly flocks to your website overnight to help realize your vision (lol). But I have very much enjoyed the process of developing a forum, including discovering communities like Forum Promotion, among others 🙂.

Hope that's informative. I appreciate being in the spotlight and having the chance to spread the word about my forum!

 

[Katrina]

Thanks @Katrina - wow it's an honor to be in the spotlight!

What prompted me to start Permitting Talk? Well, I work as a federal regulator (*pending possible gov shutdown, lol) and as such am constantly working at the intersection of rules/regulations, office practices, consultants, and the everyday people whose livelihoods are affected by the system. In gov permitting there can be a lot of knowledge that's not written down anywhere and that you really only obtain through firsthand experience, especially interpersonal kinds of knowledge, e.g., how particular permitting staff are interpreting requirements. Other times this knowledge can be relatively complex, e.g., what procedures need to be followed or what sorts of technical information needs to be collected. Whatever the case, I've gotten the sense over the years that if we just had more of a culture of people talking and sharing notes with each other, we could all be more effective and less frustrated by the pitfalls that the process often entails.

Permit applicants often hire consultants for this kind of knowledge/experience but I think many of the same kinds of benefits can be realized by just building more of a community around the whole enterprise. For example, why hire a computer programmer if you know a little about programming and can find solutions by asking others online or by researching past answers (as I've done many times myself)? The same holds true for permitting...ideally people should be able to rely more on each other and less on experts, including agency staff, to understand what they need to do to effectively navigate bureaucracy.

So I created Permitting Talk to help try and create such a community! One thing I have learned is that starting a forum really is hard work and obviously not everyone suddenly flocks to your website overnight to help realize your vision (lol). But I have very much enjoyed the process of developing a forum, including discovering communities like Forum Promotion, among others 🙂.

Hope that's informative. I appreciate being in the spotlight and having the chance to spread the word about my forum!

Now it all makes sense!! When I went to your forum, you knew all the right terminology, and this explains why 🙂

Forums take a while to really grow, especially the niche ones. The main thing is to not give up and that's what 50% of new forum owners do in the first year, they quit.

 

[Katrina]

@EchoRomeo what type of advertising have you been doing?

 

[EchoRomeo]

@EchoRomeo what type of advertising have you been doing?

Hi @KitKat - thanks for the question! The main way I've been regularly promoting the site is by sending HTML emails (created using mailchimp) to other businesses/individuals in the professional permitting services industry. That has actually been somewhat successful so far and a few people I've reached out to have actually signed up for the site, though their engagement has been relatively limited. I also plan on trying my hand at Google Ads (as you know from my banner ad requests 🙂) at some point in the near future.

If anyone has any advertising advice, please don't hesitate to share!

I also started getting more feedback on the site's usability from a member at XF Community and have been working on reconfiguring some aspects of it accordingly. So that's where most of my effort has gone in recent days.

Forums take a while to really grow, especially the niche ones. The main thing is to not give up and that's what 50% of new forum owners do in the first year, they quit.

Also keeping the above in mind, from your earlier post, as I continue to develop my forum - so thanks for that! I've been having fun with the whole process so far - site building/content creation/promotion - but also continue to channel my inner Field of Dreams Kevin Costner as far as audience goes 🙂.