Automated Birthday Greetings for All Members.

[Garfield Creator]

Birthdays are a key form of network interaction

Why?

• Every single member has one. Every member!
• People usually enjoy being appreciated & wished Happy Birthday on their birthday. Just look at how this works on Facebook!
• More than any day of the year it's a time when your members are usually in a good mood & don't mind being contacted about this.
• More than any day of the year people usually remember what happens on their Birthday. Do you want to be remembered?
• Birthdays provide an opportunity to interact with every single member during a calendar year.
• Birthdays provide an opportunity to also promote network services, promote sharing of your network & network updates along with the Birthday greeting.
• Birthdays provide another opportunity to increase relevant ad exposure with all your members during the year.
• The more members you have, the greater the opportunity. 40 to 60 members reached a day for some large networks.

Network Birthday Management is an essential part of my Network Management Strategy

I'm a network creator who cares about their community. Why else would you go through the challenge of running a Network? I have experienced what it feels like firsthand to be wished Happy Birthday. If I could wish all my members Happy Birthday I would. However, my community is made up of several thousand members. It would be a nightmare to manage through traditional ways even if it was made up of only several hundred members. Taking advantage of this opportunity to create goodwill between my members and my network in a personal way only a birthday greeting can provide was a problem to be solved for me. It wasn't too long before I also realized all the additional benefits (listed above) of creating a system to do this. It became imperative I figure this out. It meant so much to me.

My own network experience

I am happy to say that this system is currently running on my network as of January 1st, 2013. It was actually one of my New Year's Resolutions. I wanted to wish every member of my site Happy Birthday for every day this year.

My site has several thousand members so I average about 40 to 60 Birthdays a day. (Those of you who have that large a site know this is true). As of January 21st (the time of this post) I have wished over 1,000 members Happy Birthday. It feels really good inside to be able to know my network could be the cause of brightening someone's day. I have noticed increased traffic to the site probably because I am reaching people who may have not been active but for my greeting. I have a good reason to contact many possibly inactive members.

What's great is that it is a "set it & forget it" kind of automation. It is set once and runs the entire year without my interaction at all. The only reason I would need to be involved again is if I wanted to change the content of the birthday message which isn't too hard to do.

The impact on a community

This is something I feel every network should have. Imagine all Networks on Ning wishing all their members Happy Birthday. This would mean all Networks would "touch" every member at least once a year. This would be gazillions of people. Imagine being able to customize the message to suit your network and generate more traffic back to your network. Imagine this all happening automatically without any manual interaction from you

Future plans

You often don't realize how far you can go until you go as far as you can go. While working on this script it dawned on me that a network wishing a member Happy Birthday is one kind of level of interactivity. However, what if you could notify their friends on the network that their birthday is coming up? This would make for an even deeper level of community interaction between members. I'm pretty close on adding this to the mix.

[Shesh Dhar Tiwari]

Thanks Garfield Creator. Good news. I was very seriously thinking about this possibility. This will help us a lot. I would like this feature to be installed on my network http://thatsme.in

[Garfield Creator]

Thank you for your reply Shesh. You are the first to reply. Do you have over 10,000 members?

[Shesh Dhar Tiwari]

No............. but I need this feature......... please.........please........please.......as a special case. I am all alone to work for my network and this will help me a lot. I don't have funds to go for paid stuff or to appoint someone to work for me. I will be grateful, if you can...........

We have @1500 members.

[Shesh Dhar Tiwari]

ok........... I will try to manage. Thanks for encouragements.

[PeruCool]

;) Good idea. I join the request :: Red Social - Perucool.com

[Josh Hall]

I have over 10,000 Members.

[Garfield Creator]

You certainly do and you've done a great job at keeping the swapmessenger growing by adding development to keep things interesting. I run a network in the 17k range and I've been forced to create solutions that help make running a large community simpler. If you join my network I think you'll find this to be the case as time goes on. I love collaborating on issues fellow large networks face. If you have any questions feel free to message me.

[Josh Hall]

So this means you'll set it up for free? :)

[Garfield Creator]

For you josh? I'll do it for the same amount you paid Elson to set up your custom search :-). For a guy who wears a Tux in his profile I don't think that will be a problem.

[Josh Hall]

I think the Elson modification is bit different to a greetings script. Just because I wear a tux in my pic (facebook pic) doesn't mean i'll buy anything at any price.

[Garfield Creator]

I understand and I agree with you. I was just "joshing" with you.

There are some complications with the Network I picked to do a free implementation. It has not been sorted out yet. If you are still interested and are willing to provide feedback on the script. I can install the script on your site for free for all your members. Let me know.

[Kos]

Another great way to promote the community spirit.  Way to go Garfield.  We're a small site however if we ever expand, I'll have to look for this one in the archives.  Nice job.