Building A Community

[Karrit]

Alright, well I've been trying to figure this out for a while now... How do I build up a respectable community? I've been searching all over the web for answers and so far nothings worked. I tried advertising everywhere I know, doing post exchanges, which I highly hate because most of them time the person I exchange posts with ends up spamming my board instead of helping it. I even tried a few reviews, which all say the same thing... The layout and skin are really good you just need some more members. (Well thanks for pointing out the obvious) Anyways, I was hoping someone here could give me some tips as to how to do this. Form a community.

Just so you know, my forums genre is life discussion, and I know that's really hard to get going because no one likes posting about their personal life too much. Also my forums only been open for a week, but I always see all these guests but no one ever joins. Maybe I'm being too impatient, but that's why I need your guys expert advice to help me stay on the right track!

Thanks so much.

 

[AnAccount]

Okay, I can see one problem off the bat: You're making it sound like your forum's just going to up and grow from probably 3 members to 100 members overnight, and that you're going to get 5000 posts in the same time limit. I hate to say it, but that won't happen. It takes a lot of patience to promote a forum, and I mean LOTS of patience. I know I myself felt the same way you did: Forum's only been open for a week; no activity coming in-- now what? This is where too many administrators close their boards because they get too frusterated with how things are going for them. Maybe you should change your forum's genera to something people are more comfortable with. Because you're right, not everyone likes posting about what's going on in their RL, especially if it's something seriously personal. So I would reconsider your forum's genera a bit and maybe find a niche that people are more comfortable posting at. Also, even if you do decide to stick with what you're doing, the key word is patience. Some people have great luck with their forums, some don't. All you got to do is keep requesting services and just see what comes out of it. Maybe even submit your site to some search engines too, or promote on Twitter. That gives me a lot of traffic, and a few good bots that come in and index the site.

 

[Karrit]

Yeah I was thinking about possibly heading more towards general chat later down the road, but for now this life will be our main discussion. And thanks for all this it really helped. I already closed the forum down twice because of what you said... I promised myself I would stick through it all this time though.

 

[Cosmic]

Where have you promoted?

If it was just promotion forums, then you are not going about things right at all. You can't do this sort of thing in one week. Post exchanges are just meaningless statistics, not actual discussion. There is no real life to a forum with post exchanges, just "I. have. to. make. one. more. post. so. I. can. get. on. with. my. life.".

You need to actually cater to your target audience, not administrators.

 

[AnAccount]

Yeah I was thinking about possibly heading more towards general chat later down the road, but for now this life will be our main discussion. And thanks for all this it really helped. I already closed the forum down twice because of what you said... I promised myself I would stick through it all this time though.

That's another thing: You have to quit opening and closing your board all the time. I used to do this alot, but I learned the hard way that that's a good way to lose what could be thousands of members. I also made the mistake of trying to think, "I'll stick to it this time" but time and time again I've failed, and I've made more enemies than friends because of it, which is why my current forum isn't growing as fast. If you want your forum to grow, you should leave your site open unless you want to add some modifications or something. You have to stick with it unless you honestly can't handle it anymore. And I mean honestly can't handle it. Again, this is the exact way I started, and it's taken a lot of time to gain members' trust back. If you're just catering to promotion sites, that's a no-go right there. You have to promote all over the place. Search engines, Twitter, perhaps find some forums that are the same genera as yours and promote there.

 

[Karrit]

Yeah I understand... And I've advertised everywhere I could think of so far. Thanks for all the tips guys. I don't plan on closing anytime soon.

 

[Robi]

We have hundreds of guests at our site and maybe one or two sign up but that is one or two more than you will get if you keep opening and closing the forum.

the forum genre is unique but you have to get it very inviting to people as it is going to be about people personal lives and what not.

My best advice is to stick with it make a load of topics to start people off that way when someone joins or looks in they will see it active with new threads being posted that will then create a discussion with people, if the forum does not look active (new threads being posted etc.) many people will look away rather than look in.

You will be wuiet for a godd two months but in that time you will slowly see a rise in active members and then you just need to keep it fresh with new content to keep the members interested and give them something to talk about.

 

[Karrit]

Yeah I've been trying to make as many topics as possible, while still actively maintaining the board.

 

[el canadiano]

Be a respectable guy at other forums and websites. SEO would be important but it's hard doing it in Zetaboards, so forget it. However, something that really is rising is SMO. Get out to the real world, including Facebook and Twitter. Here are examples of Facebook Pages and Twitter Accounts about my forum.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Unofficia ... 161?ref=ts
http://www.twitter.com/rockbandforum

Also, make sure you're throwing in topics every day. Make sure the off-topic forums don't overwhelm your on-topic forums as well. Bottomline? There's more to it than just Forum Promotion (and forums which are based on Forum Promotion), I'm sorry.

 

[Karrit]

Yeah I understand and thanks 🙂

 

[Justin]

From what I know, people don't join forums with 1,000 posts by the admin and no one else. Buy a private poster to use (and multiple accounts, if he/she offers it) to fill up the forum with 'fake' posts. After a while people notice the forum and get on it, you can gradually remove the posters posts.

Also, your forum will absolutely not grow to 50 k posts in 6 months. Or 10 in one month. Just common misconceptions when owning a forum. Owning a forum is 82% wait time.

 

[Karrit]

I'm alright thanks... I don't need fake accounts to get activity. It's only been a week. I'll just wait.

 

[Acorn]

Free forums aren't actually hard to do SEO on as one might think. Before we moved off Proboards our site was #1 for a large array of really sweet keywords, brought us in over 1000 uniques a day. not huge, but sure respectable.

I recommend further specialising your forum to be about a smaller niche within life discussions. That is a very broad topic and not even one that people might distinguish easily from general discussion. You have to look and see whether there are already a lot of other highly successful forums doing just what you do. For example my boards are large Warriors fan roleplay. We aren't the official forum so can't compete with that obviously, but we offer things that the official boards don't such as a large overarching more organised roleplay that skews slightly older and has more appeal to mid/older teens and adults. At the same time there are a whole lot of smaller Warriors RP forums that people go to for a smaller game, but if they want a big varied one that is more literate and structured than what's available on the official boards, they pick us. So while there are many in our genre there is no perfect match for what we offer.

 

[Loopy Legend]

If your running a real life discussion (or similar) forum then the best thing you can do is advertise on blogs, forums or websites that have similar topics. Like on a blog say come to my site to talk on such matters, promotion forums are nice to some forum stats from post exchanges and help with feedback, but you wont really get real emmbers on a promotion forum.

 

[rottenforums]

Just keep pushing forward with the real purpose to why you put up a forums in the first place. If you don't stroke your own passion for why you made it to begin with there is nothing behind it. Give people content. Discussion content, movie content, audio content, whatever content it may be that pulls people in and gets them to want to show others your site and what you're all about. You are selling yourself just as much as you are selling your site in the early stages. So what do you personally bring to the table that will want people desiring more?

I've got a guy who follows my video site that has now come over to the new forums and is posting the most absurd things about himself and his life. Since we're an off-topic site he is not only a great member for being so random, but a perfect hook to bring in others. This guy is certifiable and seems to be having a blast writing about his borderline obscene life. And the people who are starting to join the site are replying to him because he's funny and gets a reaction out of people. I'm already working with him to make a quick short over his last poem with one of my video sites cast members (an adult themed puppet show). All it takes is that 1 thing to catch people.

Without that reaction no matter good / bad / indifferent, what is there? I've read so many posts on the various forum and admin sites of people wanting to get more hits, more members, more posts. And they link up half dead sites with 50 categories, and 3 people posting in them. So many people wanting it to just land on their laps. You have to hustle it on the ground level. Change things. If I were you I would dump 1/2 of your forums and consolidate the posts to under 5 categories until you hit 1,000 posts. Then split off 1 forum. Wait another 1k, split off another, and so on.

It's an ongoing process, there's no defacto standard of what will work. What will work for me may or may not work for you. I haven't run anything but corporate level forums up until now so an off-topic forum is a completely new animal for me and why I'm roaming the pages of these promotion sites to learn the tips and tricks 🙂