Active Recruting

[Battou]

Well, I was basically handed this site a little over a year ago, had few members and little activity at the time. I've driven the hit counts up but I am getting very little userbase conversion, let alone long term regular users. The more desprate I grow the more I consider going about a more active recruting practice, litterally singling out and asking members of similar forums to join the site and help it develop. I've seen it work on other forums but have always shied away from it because it feels kind of spammy to me.


Thoughts?

 

[USHost247]

Promoting your forum isn't spam, just don't go sending messages 5-10 times to the same person and bugging them about it, if people are interested, they will take a look.

 

[MrJohn]

Yea I agree with Chris. You should definitely find people with similar taste in forums and ask if they would check out yours for you, but don't mass pm all members of a forum.

 

[Bejay]

Sending PM's to everyone or even a few people is spam. This isn't. 🙂

 

[Kaynil]

If a forum is Open for you to advertise your place, then it is not SPAM. Only if you act outside their rules it is.

Some people are okay with PM invitation, some aren't. Some are okay with posting threads, some aren't, it is just about following the flow of the other sites.

In general, I don't think it is SPAM by itself. So Go for it. Just get familiar first with the place you will be posting at.

 

[BrydoRX]

I have invited many people to my forum, mostly from my pool of YouTube friends and it was good that most of them accepted the invitation and didn't see it as spam, as I carefully wrote out my invitation message and didn't write it as "hi can u plz join mi forum??? thx".

 

[Red Herring]

I do this quite often. It's highly effective.

If the rules say nothing about it, then I shall try to do it. But I make no point in asking members from forums that seem to need the active members.

 

[Battou]

I have invited many people to my forum, mostly from my pool of YouTube friends and it was good that most of them accepted the invitation and didn't see it as spam, as I carefully wrote out my invitation message and didn't write it as "hi can u plz join mi forum??? thx".

Wile "hi can u plz join mi forum??? kthx bye" is not exactly my style I do have some difficulty in professionalism in posting, I'm pathetic, I can do it but a fifty word statement often takes me eight hours to get worded... :lol: Iguess this means I should go to work huh. My problem here is with as desprate as I am I don't want to come across as desprate.

If the rules say nothing about it, then I shall try to do it. But I make no point in asking members from forums that seem to need the active members.

I can understand this, but at the same time I am sort of targeting a group that commonly are registered and active users of multiple forums on the same subject. That said I do think I could get away with a little of it. I do think I should definately steer clear of recruting from forums that I serve as staff on.

 

[Red Herring]

If the rules say nothing about it, then I shall try to do it. But I make no point in asking members from forums that seem to need the active members.

I can understand this, but at the same time I am sort of targeting a group that commonly are registered and active users of multiple forums on the same subject. That said I do think I could get away with a little of it. I do think I should definately steer clear of recruting from forums that I serve as staff on.

(I've gotten away with it to) I even mentioned this method in my promotion guide, how to be manipulating (not the evil kind). I just try to make it a point not to potentially take away members from forums that appear to be struggling.

As for recruiting people, the best method is to try and appear as human as possible, make them feel comfortable, and then put your site in the spotlight. Appearing as the common advertiser/narcissist makes the chance of them joining go down quite a bit.

And I have no problem with anyone doing this.

 

[Battou]

Well, What I'm going to do is basically treat this like a new site. The question is, do I think small and target a dozen or so from across three or four sites or go ballistic and shoot for twenty to fifty from across all the sites I use with a couple exceptions.

 

[Red Herring]

Well, What I'm going to do is basically treat this like a new site. The question is, do I think small and target a dozen or so from across three or four sites or go ballistic and shoot for twenty to fifty from across all the sites I use with a couple exceptions.

Go for however much you feel you can take, gent. If you go ballistic though, I'd try it on much larger forums compared to smaller ones.
:great: