Congrats to Tri State Fans.com

[Titanfan89]

Want to congratulate Photoguy and the rest of the crew who got this site up and working, as it has hit the 100 new member level with about 70 "active" members. I have suggested that we add forums about outdoor sports such as hunting and fishing as well. It is great that we have this forum to use after the KHQA boards went down. I really enjoy talking local sports with everyone and enjoy the discussions.

[PhotoGuy]

Thanks, and thanks for the Hunting & Fishing forum idea. I have also included "outdoor sports" as kind of a catch all, so I can show off my SCUBA diving pictures :).

Seriously, though, 100 members is pretty good for as short as we have been open. Pretty easy to figure out the "active members" percentage, isn't it?

I can look at the statistics, and I can see we usually have at least as many people reading the forums as we do logged in, so I would say we are a lot closer to 150 active users of the forum, some just don't post. I can also see that a lot of the schools are checking us out. Just today, I saw readers from five different high schools... don't want to mention names in case they aren't supposed to be doing this, but they are there.

I would like to encourage anybody who is reading this but who isn't a member to go ahead and sign up. Even if you don't post, we can get an idea of who you are and where you are from and help tailor future services to meeting your needs.

And, of course, if you would be kind enough to tell your friends that this is where all the cool kids hang out, we would appreciate it.

Thanks to you Titan and the other moderators and regular users who post here, any success we have is thanks to you all... not me. I just built the place... it is nothing but an empty shell without you guys.

Thanks also to our friends in the media who have helped us out by spreading the word: Chris Duerr and KHQA TV for the mentions in Duerrisms, WBBA radio for inviting me on their SUNDAY Night Sports show (even though I obviously can't tell a Sunday from a Saturday) and several other mentions, KMEM Radio for the mentions during the Friday Night Scoreboard shows, the Edina Sentinel and Kahoka Media for some publicity they helped us with, The Memphis Democrat for adding us to their sports page with a courtesy ad, and any other people I may have overlooked.

We are growing by a MEMBER or two a day... but we are growing by QUALITY members... just this week we have seen Shelby County Kid join us (you all know him from the old board, a guy who definitely knows his stuff) and Chris from Memphis who I personally know, and others.

A couple days ago I contacted all of our "not active" members and asked them to give us another look. Hopefully a few of them will. A lot of them signed up when we were just starting out and their wasn't much content here, so I hope that eventually they will try us again.

I have been passing out cards to people at ballgames, seeing how that works... I am also going to be making flyers to put up around the various businesses in Northeast Missouri featuring pictures of their local teams plus tear-offs of our website name. We will give that a try. I am going to be sending out letters to all of the high schools athletic boosters asking that they give out our information at their meetings as well.

There are going to be a couple more changes coming soon to the board, but they will be all good. I am planning to try to get some really good stuff going with the Quincy Spartans, the Hannibal Cavemen and the Quincy Gems this year, and am hoping to get the blogging going in the next month or so (I am debating on how the best way to do that is).

I would like to do a get-together of the members here this spring some time so we can all shoot the breeze together. I am thinking perhaps we could do a tailgater before a Spartans home game or something like that.

Eventually, I would like to expand the board into coverage of southeast Iowa, starting with Keokuk and working our way out from there.

Part of what will eventually make this site the success that it is going to be is consistency... people want to see a track record of good, quality content before they commit to joining us... what I mean is that coaches and athletic directors need to see the VALUE that we can provide before they are fully on-board. Coaches and AD's have a very well founded suspicion of message boards... since most sports boards tend to be flame-fests, and frankly it will just take some time for us to SHOW them that we are different. We discuss the games, and support our teams and our kids.

Moving forward, we are going to go into a "dry spell" for the board in about a month and a half, after basketball season is over. I have some plans about things to do, but it will be a lot more dead around here then until football season.

I am going to add sections for high school baseball (and softball in the fall), but those will not bring out the interest that the two majors do. We are going to be talking MLB around here more when the season gets started (I have a volunteer to be a Cubs blogger, thanks Angle) and there will be some other stuff as well. We are definitely going to try to hit the ground running in August for next year's football season... more details about that later.

Thanks for the mention and best wishes to all.

[Titanfan89]

Photoguy, your going to have to request a radio interview with the boys from WCAZ AM 990 to get some more Hancock County love for TSF.com. I'm sure they would love to discuss the site and sports with you.

[Titanfan89]

I also have another suggestion, though I don't know if it would require money or not. Get in touch with local athletic departments and see if TSF.com can get a plug in the programs that are printed. I don't know if that would require any money but I would be willing to donate a few of my dolla dolla bills.

[Lost Soul]

Tip of my hat from deep in the soul and thanks also for the board and the info passed along by fans from games I could never get enough time to see. If you had a card that could be printed out from on line here I would be glad to drop it off at various places as I travel the area, for example was in Hannibal yesterday and Beardstown today. If there are high school games I try to stay and attend them. But I think I could talk some schools into allowing me to drop off the cards at say the ticket sales area. I would have no problem getting them to the KHQA shootout, thats 11 games and about 18 different towns. So lets us all know what we can do to help. Big THANKS to you for the board.

[Titanfan89]

I agree with the superfan pub. Tell Duerr to get TSF in the program and announced during games.

Pretty, Pretty PPPPLLLLLEEEEEEEAAAASSSSEEEEEEE Duerr?

[catmando]

Photoguy I'm sure if you know this or not, but when you were mentioning baseball and softball you mentioned softball in the fall. In Illinois softball is in the spring and volleyball is in the fall, and in Iowa, HS softball season is in the summer. Like you said, it won't get much attention, but there are some interested people. You're doing a great job--keep up the good work!

[10&J]

SUPERFANS/SUBWAY/KHQA programs have been printed. Next best idea I have is get any fllyers, or inserts to me and I will make sure they get inserted in the programs or displayed though the the School, Hospitality room, cafeteria also. Photoguy I also have a ticket for you or if you want to run a contest on here we could give it away. Its good for both days all games. Just enjoy the idea of spreading the word about this board and more the merrier. Next year we can get the Tristatesfan.com in the program and perhaps get the word out to schools playing in advance that we can talk about it on here. NOT to step on Duerr's toes but help promote KHQA in return for the ad in the program. Sound fair?
Jim

[Titanfan89]

Im liking all these ideas.

[PhotoGuy]

SUPERFANS/SUBWAY/KHQA programs have been printed. Next best idea I have is get any fllyers, or inserts to me and I will make sure they get inserted in the programs or displayed though the the School, Hospitality room, cafeteria also. Photoguy I also have a ticket for you or if you want to run a contest on here we could give it away. Its good for both days all games. Just enjoy the idea of spreading the word about this board and more the merrier. Next year we can get the Tristatesfan.com in the program and perhaps get the word out to schools playing in advance that we can talk about it on here. NOT to step on Duerr's toes but help promote KHQA in return for the ad in the program. Sound fair?
Jim

Hi & welcome to the forum. You associated with the game? I could do up some inserts, that would be good. Would need to know what size the programs are.

A contest for the ticket might be fun... perhaps we cans set something up for a tuesday night game, guess the score of a certain team that's playing and closest to the score wins... with the score of the opponent the tiebreaker, something like that. I personally will just wave my nifty little press card (actually, my 3 press cards, I actually work for a newspaper) so I won't need one to get in :)

I started TriStateFans.com a couple weeks before the KHQA boards shut down, but I didn't advertise it there because I thought that would be inappropriate to do without permission... and at that point in time the KHQA staff didn't know if we were OK or a bunch of cranks, so I didn't even ask. Fair enough.

KHQA waited until football season was over, which was nice for the fans but it also means that we missed the entire football crowd. Here in northeast Missouri, football is a lot bigger than basketball, especially at schools like Clark, South Shelby and Centralia. Advertising helps, but I have ZERO budget for it right now... it's not like this place makes money or anything... at this point in time it is 100 percent expense, and I am trying to limit that as much as I can.

Now if KHQA wanted to do me a favor and send out an email to all 13,000 subscribers to their old board with our link on it... I sure wouldn't complain... their techy guys could do that in about 3 minutes :) Or even just point their old dead board our way with a disclaimer that we are not associated with them (to protect themselves) that would be OK too. Or both :)

[10&J]

ON another thread I left info that I can get the insert from you at Hamilton tonight, if possible. Baring that working out mail it or drop it off at Subway in Quincy.

If you start a thread about what teams fans would like to see play each other NEXT year in the shootout I will pass that along. Some of those decisions will be made over the next weekend between games. There is a waiting list of teams wanting in. Lets be honest though, Duerr is a god or is it gawd when it come to setting up games. Hard to beat his matchup's year after year.

[Titanfan89]

Hmmm, where did my post go?

[Duerr]

Sorry guys. I have been away from the boards the last few days trying to get trained on new editors here at the station. (I hate technology) I am all in for any tie-in we can do for the Forums here and the Superfan Shootout.

I tried to find out about the old message board address list and was told that the site, which was independant of KHQA from the start (outside supplier) has been completely dismantled. I will ask again next week when things are less hectic here (and the technology switch is complete)

On a happy note, we survived our first three tape-less shows this week...without a mishap yet...knock on wood...fingers crossed