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Exclusive Interview with Fabio Cuffaro
Fabio Cuffaro is the owner of the fast growing and extremely successful webmaster forum TotalWebTalk. I thought his unique insight would be of great benefit to our readership, so I asked him to do an interview with me, he kindly agreed.
Can you give us a brief history of the TotalWebTalk forum?
Total Web Talk was originally founded by someone else. I was browsing through the “sites for sale” in another forum and came across the thread that had TWT for sale. I contacted the person and he told me the site had not been sold yet and so I purchased it right away. I bought the site on February 24, 2005; it had 140 members.
What can people expect to find at TotalWebTalk?
We have a great bunch of moderators and members who are friendly and willing to help and answer questions. The feeling you get from participating in the forum is that people are nice.
What do people gain from joining and taking an active part in your forum?
The beauty about community based web sites is that you can get together with like minded people and share thoughts about topics that concern them. In our case we’re a webmaster forum so people generally talk about web topics. Sharing and communicating with like minded people is one benefit amongst several more.
The Internet is a big place and we are not physically present on the internet. We surf and read information but there’s little networking done because there are so few ways to interact with other people. Just like business in the “offline” world, building a reputation is important for good business online. Being known for being a stand up person can go a long way and building reputation on TWT is one of the major benefits of participating. The more people participate, the better known they get. This could have long term benefits from referrals and direct business contact.
What is the most difficult part of running a forum of TWT's size?
The most difficult part is trying to keep the atmosphere of the forum friendly and professional. Happily, the core group of members that participate regularly are great people and so it makes it easier to maintain the friendliness and professionalism. I have always believed that the admin/moderator team is the core of the community. The key is to build solid relationships with each member of the team. Communication is the key and as an admin transparency is paramount. When the vibes are good within the team they tend to radiate outwards and the community itself tends to mirror the team.
How do you manage to filter out spam posters so effectively?
Basically, we pounce on spam posts and most of the time we contact the person who made the post and request that they participate in the forum before promoting themselves. We have also created simple restrictions for new members. We have a category that is named Market Place where members can post their services, trade links and so on. A new member must have at least 10 posts before they have permission to post there. It’s a setting that we have created where the system will not allow people that have less than 10 posts to start a thread or even post. This seems to have deterred many would be spammers and it makes it easier for us to manage.
What techniques do you use to recruit/retain active forum members?
The first technique is to have quality content and an active forum. Being friendly and helpful has helped us to continue having regular visits and participation from members. Recognizing members for their loyalty is very important to us at TWT. We have a list of the top ten posters for the month. The people that are on this list get their names published on the home page and in our newsletter. They also get their sites featured on the home page through a screenshot rotator. The screen shot of their sites rotate randomly every time a person lands on the home page.
How active are you personally in the forum?
I am very active. I love being able to interact and help people out and people always love it when they know the owner. By being active means that people constantly have access to me and are not intimidated or shy to ask me questions.
In what direction do you intend to the take the forum in 2006?
This year our goal is to make Total Web Talk a recognizable name in the webmaster community. There are many quality and famous webmaster forums out there and we want to be included in that list of top notch forums.
Finally, do you have any New Year's resolutions?
Yes I do. My resolution is to be more vocal, I tend to be timid online. In person I can talk your ear off but online I still have a problem communicating. Total Web Talk in some sense has been therapeutic because it forces me to be vocal.
Thanks for your time