Promoting goods & services

Jazzy

is this crowd paying boards.ie to promote their services on here? they seem to be able to promote their free service here

then this guys thread was locked for promoting a free game. what is the difference between them? what makes one ok and not the other?

is there some sort of deal done or what is the story?

BuffyBot

Yes - the first is an official company representative. They've agreed to a strigent set of rules about what is and isn't permitted in order to be able to post and assist their customers/potential customers and contribute something to the site.

As you see, they are clearly marked.

The other, has just come along with out any permission and tried to drum up business for himself/his product.

There is a pretty marked difference.

Jazzy

so 'Yes' they are paying?

did you present those same rules to the other or give him the chance to?

The Sweeper

Jazzy

Official company representatives go though a process of discussion with boards.ie and will only be granted an official company representative account if we feel that our users benefit from the information the company rep can provide. The allocation of a company rep account is preceded by a request - usually the company approach us.

Shills and spammers do not do these things, and we do not find it necessary to offer anything to someone who ignores their sign-up email and the charters of the forum they are posting in and promotes themselves, their product or their service without requesting prior permission from the site.

Jazzy

so they arent paying?

the process is:
-a company is interested on promoting on boards
-they approach the admin team about it
-the admins weigh up if this is of benefit to the users
-the admins then give or deny permission to the company

is this right? is there any companies paying boards.ie to use it as a place of promotion?

The Sweeper

I'll need Darragh and Dav to confirm this, but as far as I know the official company rep accounts don't pay any fees. I think this is twofold - one, because if they start paying a fee they believe they have entitlements (which they don't have - they're here due to a cooperative agreement,) and two, because we reserve the right to refuse an account to any company who we don't believe are "of use" to our users.

A typical company rep account would be, for instance, the person who owns a shop that stocks multiple brands of equipment and also provides advice to people who are vastly interested in a certain thing - for instance, let's pretend there's a Pogo forum. If you're Larry, and you own the Pogo Stick store in the city centre; if your store is considered "the place to go" by the Pogo fans, if you stock a range of brands and have a lot of information, from starter sticks to professional sticks; if you sponsor the national championships, and if your store also does repairs - and if all of our users mention your store a lot anyway, then you're a good candidate for an offical company representative account - if you want one.

Jazzy

i wish there was a bigger scene for pogo
ty for info!