Should we be recommending Bicycles.StackExchange to our Local Bike Shop (LBS)

Question

I know the guys at my Local Bike Shop (Cheeky Transport in Sydney, they are awesome!), are very helpful with answering questions.
However, I also know that they need to get back to work fixing bikes, and can't answer questions all day.
Considering that, they would probably be interested in promoting a quality bicycle question and answer site, in that it may help reduce their question and answer workload.

So questions are,

Should we be recommending Bicycle.SE to our LBS?
Is there a standard "invitation" if you like, that could be sent to your LBS?
Is there a set of rules or recommendations for LBS entering Bicycles.SE (could apply to manufacturers as well)?
An example would be recommendations on full disclosure of interests. Eg You are a bike shop that sells certain brands but in your answers you manage to slip in recommendations on your brands.

If bike shops recommended Bicycles.SE to their customers then it would probably get a wider demographic, which relates to my other question What is the proportion of users on Bicycles.StackExchange who are not on StackOverflow?

Answer 1

I think you have the right idea here:

However, I also know that they need to get back to work fixing bikes, and can't answer questions all day. Considering that, they would probably be interested in promoting a quality bicycle question and answer site, in that it may help reduce their question and answer workload.

The way to pitch this is to ask yourself "how can bicycles.se help the local bike shop?"

Realize too that hyper-locality is actually the opposite of what we do here, but that's exactly what a local bike shop is best at. So at least in theory, bicycles.se and your local bike shop should be complementary.

Answer 2

Absolutely you can tell your shop about this site!

Many of these issues have been discussed here on meta, although not all of them conclusively.

• Part of the problem in explaining these sites to people is that Stack Exchange is not a forum, it's a Q&A site. The differences can be subtle. For that, have a look at this: One short paragraph that describes this site

• We've discussed how to maintain interest over the winter.

• Here are some flyers you can use to promote the site. We'll have some with the new design shortly. (I've been putting that off, will get to it ASAP.)

Part of the problem is that we need to explain to bike shops: What's in it for them? Why should they help promote this site? People who sell and repair bikes in general do it because they love bikes and like talking to people about them. What would it add to the equation for them to promote this site?

Answer 3

I think we also need to get product managers for branded products on board. Maybe with a piece written for the trade press. Within the Q+A format there is not much scope for them hyping their products in a way that would be ugly, however, they could post questions that come in their inboxes for the benefit of others facing a similar problem.

An answer provided by - say - a Shimano product manager on how to fix one of their common issues would carry more weight/authority than afforded to a mere cyclist if they wanted to use an ID with their job title/company in there. Plus, if people knew they were listening, then they would post questions knowing their concerns were being listened to.

Answer 4

Why not talk to bike shops about what we do.

In fact, we should be giving bike shops cards or stickers or some other cheap + provocative + convenient promo artifact that the guys behind the counter can use themselves or give to customers.

Stickers? Does any real rider actually want a sticker? Maybe something reflective that is actually practical? (Expensive, I imagine, but maybe doable).

A stack of cards may be too commonplace. Any cheap wild ideas?

Answer 5

In our plans for world domination (TM) we could get ahead of the bike shop staff that already have so much information to deal with.

Most bikes come with a manual. Not everyone reads these and they are not necessarily that up to date or good. However, some manufacturers do put good manuals together and refresh them from time to time.

We need to get into those manuals. The instructions should be clear - got a question and post it onto bicycles.se with the tag 'brand x' where 'brand x' is whomever the bike brand is.

Then some manager from 'brand x' gets email alerts of whatever the question is.

For this to work some guarantees on the future direction of the site are needed - do we get adverts? If we do get adverts, will they be for what? You cannot have a 'Trek' customer see a 'Giant' advert for such participation to work. The advert algorithm could solve this problem by reading the page tags and doing something appropriate.