Patrick

Welcome aboard, JohnR! Glad to have you. I have a good friend who lives outside Philadelphia and have been up to visit him once and see the city. Really cool place. We spent a day and a half or so exploring and I felt like we only scratched the surface. Look forward to coming back. Patrick

Home Alone 2 knocked out last night. Hopefully Die Hard tonight and then Christmas Vacation on Christmas Eve.

Welcome Mr. Foreman. Patrick

I'll be spending time with family on Christmas. Low-key merriment. I'm a big believer in moving holidays to the day that you can celebrate it with the people that matter. New Years doesn't work that way, but pretty much every other holiday does. Patrick

Amazing story, Devin!

Congrats 126barnes! Nicely done. Patrick

What are the movies you watch every year? We watched Home Alone last night, with Home Alone 2, Die Hard and Christmas Vacation on tap. I know tallgeese is a strong believer in Die Hard as a Christmas movie.

Hey all, I'm a little late in posting this (especially for our Jewish friends, sorry!), but I wanted to wish everyone a great holiday season and an amazing 2016. Thank you for sharing a bit of yourself with our community! Patrick

Congrats Liam!

Devin!!! That is awesome. Congrats. So happy for you. What was your reaction like? Patrick

Give that link another try. There is nothing harmful there. Thanks Bob.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, everyone. No shortage of solid ideas! The reason that your posts on your personal page may receive more interest than your posts on your business page has everything to do with how organic reach works on Facebook. It is much easier for you to post something on your personal page and have it reach your Facebook friends than it is for you to post something on your business page and have it reach people who have liked that page. The easy way to overcome this is to pay Facebook for advertising. Which, if you do your homework, can be a good idea. Facebook has so much data, you can easily target an ad to whatever demographic you want (people who like karate in Secaucus, NJ, for example). The harder way to grow organic reach is by posting content that people engage with (comment, like or share). The more someone does that, the more likely they are to see what you post. (Again, lots of good thoughts above). When people think about posting engaging comment, they immediately think of taking stuff (videos, photos, text) from other people, which isn't a great idea. Instead, focus on creating your own content, as much as you can. You can post nice photos of class or your school, tagging where appropriate or maybe adding an inspirational quote. You can post events that people can RSVP for (big, important ones, not just every class). If you share video, uploading that video to Facebook (as opposed to linking to YouTube) is far more likely to ensure that the people who like your page actually see that video. Even if it's just a preview of the longer video, the way Facebook prioritizes video is dramatically different between when you upload the video to them vs. when you link anywhere else. Every post is an experiment. You'll find that some things work better than others, and that's the direction you'll want to go in.

Welcome. What's your background in the martial arts? Patrick

While I wouldn't say that training to the point of vomiting 3 times is a good practice (not trying to be annoying!), I am glad you made it through and hope you get good news soon! Patrick

That's great, Bulltahr.

*cough*

Thanks man. I appreciate that. Patrick

Love to update, cheesefrysamurai! Thanks for sharing.

Haha. Thanks Alberic Blau and JR. Patrick

Hi kenpo4life, Sorry to hear about your situation. I don't see any reason why members can't share their thoughts here. As a starting point, read these threads: http://www.karateforums.com/how-do-you-advertise-your-school-vt48718.html http://www.karateforums.com/how-do-you-advertise-your-dojo-etc-vt48047.html http://www.karateforums.com/so-you-want-to-open-your-own-martial-arts-school-vt47139.html Thanks, Patrick

Hello, Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com. We recognize one member every month as the KarateForums.com Member of the Month for their positive contributions to this community. The December selection is... neoravencroft. Congratulations! Thank you for the great contributions that you have made to our community. Sincerely, Patrick

The Dolphins season is a disaster of mediocrity. It's alright. Just another year without a Super Bowl. We're climbing these charts steadily: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NFL_franchise_post-season_droughts

Belated congrats to Devin's cousin on being named the NL Rookie of the Year by a unanimous vote! Crazy impressive. http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/14148411/2015-mlb-rookie-year-kris-bryant-chicago-cubs-named-nl-winner

Haha, yeah, I made that smilie a very long time ago for a member who has long since moved on. Hope everyone who celebrates it had a nice Thanksgiving. Patrick

It's great to read all of these replies. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, everyone, and for your kind words, Alex. Small fix: I had linked to the wrong poll thread for Article of the Year. If you didn't realize, you can click the name of the award to view the poll results tied to that award. Thanks again, Patrick