The Good Men Project is the best type of participatory media. We encourage you to participate. We help you succeed.
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A long time ago, BOOM! The internet was created. In lightning speed, Google became a verb, and everything became media. And then came websites and online chat rooms and virtual communities. And soon after that platforms and social networks.
Somewhere in that warp-speed change, The Good Men Project became an idea that carved out a corner of that space and said “We’re sparking a conversation about what it means to be a good man in the 21st century. Care to join us?”
From day one, we invited you to participate.
And month after month, 3 million people show up because they want to be a part of this important conversation.
Where do those people come from? Whether you are a large media company like The New York Times, or a small one person blog, chances are your traffic comes in to your site in one of these ways: 1) Search Engines 2) Social Media 3) Other media companies/websites linking to you 4) Core readership that comes back again and again and tells others to come back. The reason social media is such an important part of that mix is because most of those people are “connected” to other people. This seems obvious, but it’s an important point. If you have 1,000 people coming into your blog — and all 1,000 of them are coming in from Google, say — the chances are pretty good that NONE of those 1,000 people will know each other.
And in a community, people get to know each other.
With The Good Men Project, we are building a community where not only do people get to know each other — but we actively try to help the other members of the community succeed. This brings us even farther away from a “regular” media company. A media company may put out information and articles that are helpful — but they are not looking to help individual people, like Joe Smith in Omaha, succeed. We are.
One of the ways we do that is by encouraging anyone who wants to work their way up — someone who reads our content and then decides to to participate in the conversation. They may start to write for us once in a while, or become one of the people who write for us weekly. Often, they want a shot at become editors or taking a leadership position like an Executive Editor. But beyond becoming part of our editorial staff, people have succeeded in all types of ways at The Good Men Project—they’ve found agents or book publishers and published their first (or second, or third) book. They’ve gotten their dream job. They’ve become friends. They’ve gotten speaking engagements. They’ve been on national TV. This doesn’t just happen once in a blue moon, these are the stories we hear every day. And when the people in our community get noticed, chances are it’s at least in part because of the writing they’ve done for The Good Men Project.
And what’s interesting—jumping back to the point about where traffic comes from and how people find us—we have never once, not ever, had someone who worked their way up through the Editorial process and then later told me—“hey you know the first time I found The Good Men Project was through Google”. We have, on the other hand, had people become Executive Editors who first connected with us through a single tweet. More than once. There is a fundamental difference between the people who are simply searching for a single article and the people who want to be a part of a community, an idea, a conversation about what it means to be a man in today’s changing world. Those are the people we want. (If however, you found this article because of Google, welcome! Please leave your name in the comments so we know you exist!)
The other thing is we do to create a community instead of just a media company is that we have built spaces where people can talk TO each other, not just come and read something.
This list shows the variety of places we have built conversations right into the culture of what we are doing:
1.) If you are a contributor or Premium Member, you can join our weekly evangelist calls—usually 15-20 people who offer amazing insights about where the conversation about what it means to be a man in the 21st century is going. Evangelist calls are every Friday at noon and you’ll get invites when as soon as you are set up in our system. Not yet a contributor to The Good Men Project? Submit here! Want to be a Premium Member? Sign up right here.
2.) We have weekly Twitter chats — those chats now reach about 10 million Twitter timelines. This past week we talked about workplace bullying, and the tweets were flying, even long after the chat officially ended. Twitter chats are every Wed. at 9 pm — just search on Twitter for #GMPChat and join in.3.) We have Google Hangouts and Rising Stars Platform Building presentations, both ways we give exclusive content to premium members. These are an inside look at how we build a participatory media company—a chance to do a video talk with Editors or experts in the field of the issues we talk about. Or a chance to help yourself succeed by learning our platform building and community building strategies and tactics.4.) We have Facebook Writers group, where GMP writers and Editors can share story ideas, develop posts, share writing tips and ask for promotional help. If you are NOT a member of that group, I would suggest you join pronto.5.) We have the comments section on the posts themselves. (You’ll note that most media companies—when they say “we’re building community” what they really mean is “we have a comments section.” For us, it’s great, and we love our commenters—but it’s not first on the list.) Also, the comments section on Facebook is a lively bunch—often a different tone and POV than the comments section on our website.♦◊♦
Yes, we’re a media company. You can’t have 3 million unique visitors that show up month after month and not call yourself a media company. But we’re a community too—a community of people with a built-in culture that helps you all succeed. And we love the conversation we are having. No one else is having a conversation about what it mens to be a man in the 21st century. Not the way we are having it. Not the breadth and depth of topics we cover from the perspective of men. Not the variety of the types of conversations we have.
We’re so glad you have joined us.
Want to become a Premium Member of The Good Men Project?
Your Annual Gold membership will include: 1) An ad-free experience. You’ll see no banner, pop-up, or video ads when you log in. And no auto-refresh, which means you can comment as long as you would like. 2) A copy of The Good Men Project printed anthology. $15 value. (Annual subscriptions only.) 3) Free access to e-books, live events and exclusive conference calls and groups. The Good Men Project will host exclusive, news-making panels with celebrities, influencers, and our own subject matter experts and columnists, to discuss hot or provocative topics in the ongoing global conversation we have sparked about manhood. 4) A Premium Member commenting badge, so you can raise your hand and be counted as a participant.
Ready to register? Just one more step:
Register New Account
Payment is by PayPal. Your membership will begin once you receive the welcome email and click the link to return back to The Good Men Project.Thank you for believing in our mission.
We have pioneered the largest worldwide conversation about what it means to be a good man in the 21st century. Your support will help ensure that it keeps growing and embraces as many voices as possible.
(If you have already joined the Good Men Project community as a writer or contributor, log in here before registering. You can change your password if needed at this stage).
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Photo: Chris Ford / Flickr
Attn. Admin. I’m having an issue getting to the site on my primary browser Firefox. When I try to get there I get a ‘502’ alert with something to do with a host error. That has been like that for several days.
Have any ideas?
Thanks
Tom Janus
Thank you, works fine now.