Help us get to 10,000 likers!

[NickinFrance]

I think this this thread should have given Clare some idea of the demographics of the magazine readership or at least those savvy enough to be able to use a computer & post messages on a forum.

 

[Dustydog]

There are a great many mistakes,or at least that is what they are explained 'away' as being but the truth of the matter is that the Proof Reader is either blind or totally without knowledge of what they are reading,maybe the writter of the article/articles is not really as esteamed as is given credit for.
Proof reading is not just looking for spelling errors,but I guess that that is not so important these days when you take into consideration the manner of Text Language and how it has spilled over into the lives of some adults.
Likes and dislikes are earned,likes are not rewarded for by giving sweeties.

............you need a more thorough proof reader

Well done Sir Baldrick,

Lord Hezza may well be after you in the January transfer window!
Charge him top rates for the job.

 

[starlightdj]

I must admit I cant understand the negativity in this topic, face book or no facebook its your option.
many comments have been made re security, if you do use facebook you can personalise your security to only allow your direct invited freinds to see your information. no one else can see you or your information.
Is facebook an age issue?. i dont think so, my parents started caravanning last year at the age of 70, They have now got a facebook account with purely the family members as freinds and the right security boxes ticked in the options settings. where ever they go now they post to facebook either by laptop of an evening using a internet dongle or via my dads smart phone.
the family get regular updates on there adventures, we get to see photos of where they are or places they visit and we get to comment and send them messges back which they enjoy reading.

Facebook is yet just another way of communicating. if you try it and find it works great. if you dont simply delete your account but please just because it does not apeal to you, dont be so negative.
I have liked practical caravans page. not for a chance of a subscription, the chance of winning is to small, but for an even better way of reading new posts issued by them or their team including updates of staff out and about.

 

[Parksy]

I use Facebook to share comments and pictures with friends and family and I also look in on Facebook pages of things that interest me, such as local history groups, music groups and entertainers that I enjoy and of course Practical Caravan. I often try to answer caravanners questions on Practical Caravan's Facebook page when there has been no rely, and I've recruited one or two forum members via Facebook.
I am not surprised at the general forum negativity which is at least in part generational i.m.o. because many forum users don't really understand the concept of Facebook and are deeply suspicious of it.
I'm not sure why there is such a common misconception regarding privacy because Facebook is just another social media tool like this or any other forum, and is no more intrusive than any other commercially owned website if the privacy settings are operated correctly.
Practical Caravan easily acheived their target of 10,000 likers, Clare simply invited forum members to take part to be in with a chance of winning the magazine subscription, and to be honest I found some of the the abruptly negative replies disappointing. Sometimes if nothing good can be said then it's best to say nothing, no wonder Practical Caravan staff rarely answer forum members questions via this forum.

 

[Surfer]

I use Facebook to share comments and pictures with friends and family and I also look in on Facebook pages of things that interest me, such as local history groups, music groups and entertainers that I enjoy and of course Practical Caravan. I often try to answer caravanners questions on Practical Caravan's Facebook page when there has been no rely, and I've recruited one or two forum members via Facebook.
I am not surprised at the general forum negativity which is at least in part generational i.m.o. because many forum users don't really understand the concept of Facebook and are deeply suspicious of it.
I'm not sure why there is such a common misconception regarding privacy because Facebook is just another social media tool like this or any other forum, and is no more intrusive than any other commercially owned website if the privacy settings are operated correctly.
Practical Caravan easily acheived their target of 10,000 likers, Clare simply invited forum members to take part to be in with a chance of winning the magazine subscription, and to be honest I found some of the the abruptly negative replies disappointing. Sometimes if nothing good can be said then it's best to say nothing, no wonder Practical Caravan staff rarely answer forum members questions via this forum.

Are you suggesting that in order to one of the crowd people should join Facebook? What purpose does Facebook serve as when I joined most people seem to post meaningless drivel?
I can email, use Skype or pick up the phone and talk to friends rather than have meaningless friends just to bump up my friend list. There is nothing special that Facebook does except to garner drivel in most cases and now has a niche market for that.
Companies that try to market their goods or prizes exclusively via Facebook to the detriment of the majority of its customers are worthy of contempt and nothing else!

 

[Parksy]

Are you suggesting that in order to one of the crowd people should join Facebook? What purpose does Facebook serve as when I joined most people seem to post meaningless drivel?
I can email, use Skype or pick up the phone and talk to friends rather than have meaningless friends just to bump up my friend list. There is nothing special that Facebook does except to garner drivel in most cases and now has a niche market for that.
Companies that try to market their goods or prizes exclusively via Facebook to the detriment of the majority of its customers are worthy of contempt and nothing else!

I'm not suggesting anything at all Surfer!
You obviously haven't found a use for Facebook so choose not to use it which is your choice. If the people that you know only send meaningless drivel to you via the internet then perhaps you ought to have altered the settings on your Facebook account.
My friends and family mean quite a lot to me and I choose to stay in touch with some of the more distant ones via Facebook amongst other ways, and I have no need to bump up any list thanks.
I have difficulty in understanding your comment about companies marketing their goods on Facebook to the detriment of the majority of their customers.
In a free society companies are perfectly at liberty to use whichever marketing tools they see fit, and in this case Claire, the newest young member of the Practical Caravan team, did her best to engage with members of this forum by telling them about a competition which they could enter if they wished.
If Clare hadn't posted on the forum you probably wouldn't have known about any competition or how to enter it so her letting you know was hardly detrimental to you or to anybody else.
It's a shame that her efforts have elicited such a negative response from you.

 

[Surfer]

Are you suggesting that in order to one of the crowd people should join Facebook? What purpose does Facebook serve as when I joined most people seem to post meaningless drivel?
I can email, use Skype or pick up the phone and talk to friends rather than have meaningless friends just to bump up my friend list. There is nothing special that Facebook does except to garner drivel in most cases and now has a niche market for that.
Companies that try to market their goods or prizes exclusively via Facebook to the detriment of the majority of its customers are worthy of contempt and nothing else!

In a free society companies are perfectly at liberty to use whichever marketing tools they see fit, and in this case Claire, the newest young member of the Practical Caravan team, did her best to engage with members of this forum by telling them about a competition which they could enter if they wished.
If Clare hadn't posted on the forum you probably wouldn't have known about any competition or how to enter it so her letting you know was hardly detrimental to you or to anybody else.
It's a shame that her efforts have elicited such a negative response from you.

Competition was restricted to those with access to Facebook and I would like to bet that not all PC readers are Facebook members. Any competition was to the advantage of PVC and no one else from what I can gather.
Happy New Year to you!

 

[NickinFrance]

Any competition was to the advantage of PVC and no one else from what I can gather.

I would have thought that all competitions were to the advantage of the organiser.

 

[Parksy]

Competition was restricted to those with access to Facebook and I would like to bet that not all PC readers are Facebook members. Any competition was to the advantage of PVC and no one else from what I can gather.
Happy New Year to you!

Pretty much everybody who uses a computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone has access to Facebook Surfer. There is a link from this forum page to Practical Caravans Facebook page and there is a similar link to PCv's Twitter account. I choose not to use Twitter in the same way that you have apparently chosen not to bother with Facebook, it all comes down to personal choice doesn't it?
Clare was not insisting that you open a Facebook account in her O.P., she simply asked for those who have friends who may be interested in PCv magazine to perform what is seen as a normal procedure for the majority of Facebook users.
If you haven't got any friends or the ones that you have don't use Facebook then you don't have to do anything at all, least of all post negative comments in reply to Clare's request.
Clare went on to add a request to those of us who are on Facebook to share the competition with Facebook friends, she let us here on the forum know about it so I don't see what more she could have done.
The requests for 'likes' would definitely be to the advantage of Practical Caravan, that was the whole idea of using FB as a marketing tool as I explained in an earlier post, just as all forms of advertising are to the advantage of the advertiser if their campaign is successful.
It would be rather difficult to enter a newspaper competition if you never read the newspaper because the competition would be 'restricted' to those who saw the details in that newspaper, and likewise it's rather difficult to enter a competition on Facebook if you don't use Facebook, all Clare tried to do was to make you aware of it to offer you a choice.

 

[ProfJohnL]

Whether you join Facebook or not is a personal choice, and everyone will have their own reasons for the choices they make.

Facebook has received quite a lot of negative comment - not just here but over the media as a whole, and I suspect its largely due to ignorance about what it does and how it does it, after all its relatively new only being 9 years old not even a teenager. I don't claim to fully understand it.

Unfortunately taking the Luddite approach wont stop its development. Its just another form of communication, and in this instance its akin to the inequity of some phone systems numbers calling a freephone number from a land line is free, but mobile users still have to pay.

Just think back to 1980's No Facebook, No Internet, No mobile phones or emails and virtually no computers (Except the Sinclair ZX80). Donkey Kong, Space-invaders and the Casio VLtone and digital watches was about as technical as it got. Yet now anybody who reads this has at least worked out how to use a PC or Mac and the Internet, and worked round the bugs in IE9.

 

[Dustydog]

Parksy said Clare simply invited forum members to take part to be in with a chance of winning the magazine subscription.

Facebook or no Facebook seeing as the Forum was here first and a lot of us Forum members are annual subscribers to PCV then IMO we should have been offered the chance to win on here NOT on Facebook. On the basis a lot of PCV faithful use the Forum , probably more than Facebook , then on reflection it may have been better to have a competition on both rather than just Facebook.
This is just my opinion and in no way is it intended as a criticism of the good work Clare does.

 

[Parksy]

...........On the basis a lot of PCV faithful use the Forum , probably more than Facebook , then on reflection it may have been better to have a competition on both rather than just Facebook.
This is just my opinion and in no way is it intended as a criticism of the good work Clare does.

An interesting perspective DD, I can undestand yours and others viewpoint but the campaign, with the incentive of a ten month subscription to Practical Caravan magazine but with a less than 1 in 1,000 chance of winning was aimed primarily at Facebook users because Facebook would provide the wider demographic.

The nature of all competitions is that one has to fulfill the terms of entry to be in with a chance of entering or winning. Was the quiz night, with potential prize of a £50 bar voucher which was won by some of the Woosies last year at Stowford set up to discriminate against Practical Caravan readers who didn't go to Stowford?
To have any chance of winning not only would entrants have had to overcome the combined knowledge of some of the Woosies finest but they would have had to be there at the time, and I'm sure that there must have been quite a few, even amongst the PCv ralliers at Stowford who were not.
Surfer was at the PCv rally, but didn't go to the quiz venue on the night of the quiz. He didn't complain on the forum that he was discriminated against in some way because he chose not to go to the quiz night, even though Practical Caravan didn't publish the quiz questions on the forum or in the magazine.

I have no hard evidence to show how many magazine subscribers or 'PCv faithful' use the Practical Caravan Forum or how many use Facebook, but I do know that Clare requested, and received, at least 10,000 responses over a reasonably short time span, a matter of a couple of weeks in fact.
Much as I'm sure the Practical Caravan team value forum contributions, they would be highly unlikely to receive a similar number of responses to a similar request within the same time period if they had used this forum to ask existing forum members to recruit 10,000 new forum members who would have had to perform a set function to prove that they had responded.

In effect Clare had asked Facebook members to recruit others to 'like' the PCv Facebook page by persuading them to click on the 'like' link, which would then feed items from PCv onto the 'likers' own FB page, a bit like subscribing to an internet news feed.

I'm not in any way privy to the goings on at Haymarket Towers, but my guess is that the idea was to try to recruit new magazine subscribers and perhaps to generate a bit of interest amongst younger caravanners or potential caravan buyers ahead of the spring caravan exhibition season. The competition was being used as an incentive in a similar way that Practical Caravan Magazine readers usually receive as an incentive a 'free gift' when they take out a subscription but the Facebook users only had one chance each to win with just ten prizes on offer when 10,000 responses had been received.

 

[Dustydog]

Oh well
on the bright side I've had a go on the "Win" section for a cover and a £250 voucher from Powrtouch. You never know

 

[Parksy]

I hope that you win DD

I've got a caravan cover and would love a motor mover but I'd still have to put a few hundred quids to the Powertouch voucher and Herself would want to kill me if I did.

I haven't seen the competitions advertised on PCv's Facebook page and FB users would probably have to sign up to this website to enter so swings and roundabouts methinks

 

[Sproket]

But you could try this offer & save a few quid