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added an extra idea I just had
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Jamie
Jamie
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At Loco2 we'd be really interested in finding a way to point our users to Travel SE.

Our main challenge around this would be working out when to tell users to post in Stack Exchange, and when to post in our own Q&A section. We have recently switched from our own forum software (which was a nightmare to maintain) to an off-the-shelf Q&A product ("Rootbuzz") which has a similar UI to Stack Exchange. We've migrated the data across from the old system so it's a bit of a mess at the moment, but you can see an example of us answering a question here:

http://answers.loco2.com/3bv-thalys-website

Note that we are happy to explain to our users exactly how Loco2 relates to other rail-booking websites, and in that respect there's no difference between us answering a question here on Travel SE versus answering it on our site. But we'd be reluctant to ditch our own Q&A section entirely because sometimes the questions are quite specific about how to use Loco2 etc, and so the SE community might not want all of that activity taking place on SE (plus our customers might get confused).

I'm keen to hear any thoughts on this in terms of specific suggestions around how the 'advertising' could work in practice. I guess an obvious place to start could be us saying "If your question is about train travel in general, ask it on Travel SE; if it is about how to use Loco2 then ask it here".

I've just had an idea about this - we can use http://data.stackexchange.com to pull content tagged "trains" and "europe" (for example) into our site. Our users would then easily be able to see how to get their questions answered on Travel SE. This wouldn't strictly be 'advertising' but it should drive some highly qualified traffic to Travel SE. I'll have a chat about this with my colleagues soon.

(On a slightly different point, I'm quite interested in how Stack Exchange is going to make loads of money for its VC investors! Presumably advertising has something to do with it!)

At Loco2 we'd be really interested in finding a way to point our users to Travel SE.

Our main challenge around this would be working out when to tell users to post in Stack Exchange, and when to post in our own Q&A section. We have recently switched from our own forum software (which was a nightmare to maintain) to an off-the-shelf Q&A product ("Rootbuzz") which has a similar UI to Stack Exchange. We've migrated the data across from the old system so it's a bit of a mess at the moment, but you can see an example of us answering a question here:

http://answers.loco2.com/3bv-thalys-website

Note that we are happy to explain to our users exactly how Loco2 relates to other rail-booking websites, and in that respect there's no difference between us answering a question here on Travel SE versus answering it on our site. But we'd be reluctant to ditch our own Q&A section entirely because sometimes the questions are quite specific about how to use Loco2 etc, and so the SE community might not want all of that activity taking place on SE (plus our customers might get confused).

I'm keen to hear any thoughts on this in terms of specific suggestions around how the 'advertising' could work in practice. I guess an obvious place to start could be us saying "If your question is about train travel in general, ask it on Travel SE; if it is about how to use Loco2 then ask it here".

(On a slightly different point, I'm quite interested in how Stack Exchange is going to make loads of money for its VC investors! Presumably advertising has something to do with it!)

At Loco2 we'd be really interested in finding a way to point our users to Travel SE.

Our main challenge around this would be working out when to tell users to post in Stack Exchange, and when to post in our own Q&A section. We have recently switched from our own forum software (which was a nightmare to maintain) to an off-the-shelf Q&A product ("Rootbuzz") which has a similar UI to Stack Exchange. We've migrated the data across from the old system so it's a bit of a mess at the moment, but you can see an example of us answering a question here:

http://answers.loco2.com/3bv-thalys-website

Note that we are happy to explain to our users exactly how Loco2 relates to other rail-booking websites, and in that respect there's no difference between us answering a question here on Travel SE versus answering it on our site. But we'd be reluctant to ditch our own Q&A section entirely because sometimes the questions are quite specific about how to use Loco2 etc, and so the SE community might not want all of that activity taking place on SE (plus our customers might get confused).

I'm keen to hear any thoughts on this in terms of specific suggestions around how the 'advertising' could work in practice. I guess an obvious place to start could be us saying "If your question is about train travel in general, ask it on Travel SE; if it is about how to use Loco2 then ask it here".

I've just had an idea about this - we can use http://data.stackexchange.com to pull content tagged "trains" and "europe" (for example) into our site. Our users would then easily be able to see how to get their questions answered on Travel SE. This wouldn't strictly be 'advertising' but it should drive some highly qualified traffic to Travel SE. I'll have a chat about this with my colleagues soon.

(On a slightly different point, I'm quite interested in how Stack Exchange is going to make loads of money for its VC investors! Presumably advertising has something to do with it!)

Source Link
Jamie
Jamie
  • 1.1k
  • 5
  • 7

At Loco2 we'd be really interested in finding a way to point our users to Travel SE.

Our main challenge around this would be working out when to tell users to post in Stack Exchange, and when to post in our own Q&A section. We have recently switched from our own forum software (which was a nightmare to maintain) to an off-the-shelf Q&A product ("Rootbuzz") which has a similar UI to Stack Exchange. We've migrated the data across from the old system so it's a bit of a mess at the moment, but you can see an example of us answering a question here:

http://answers.loco2.com/3bv-thalys-website

Note that we are happy to explain to our users exactly how Loco2 relates to other rail-booking websites, and in that respect there's no difference between us answering a question here on Travel SE versus answering it on our site. But we'd be reluctant to ditch our own Q&A section entirely because sometimes the questions are quite specific about how to use Loco2 etc, and so the SE community might not want all of that activity taking place on SE (plus our customers might get confused).

I'm keen to hear any thoughts on this in terms of specific suggestions around how the 'advertising' could work in practice. I guess an obvious place to start could be us saying "If your question is about train travel in general, ask it on Travel SE; if it is about how to use Loco2 then ask it here".

(On a slightly different point, I'm quite interested in how Stack Exchange is going to make loads of money for its VC investors! Presumably advertising has something to do with it!)