I've seen plenty of "veteran" members advise other members to start competitions and offer cash prizes in return. I admit that this might be helpful as a short term measure to get new members and posts, but it's hardly sustainable in the long run.
1) Posting competitions cause a boom/bust cycle. You get plenty of posts for a week or two, but then once the prize is given out, the people who joined up looking for your money will just jog on. Result? Flat-lining activity.
2) These competitions largely ignore that content is the only sustainable way to attract users. Your forum have interesting discussion-worthy content if it's to get anywhere. By and large, posting competitions attract people who want to make 100 posts in 24 hours to get the prize. They'll post according to the minimum standard required by your rules, and they may not even be interested in the subject matter of your forum. Expect a huge influx into your off topic section, but little improvement anywhere else.
3) They ignore how important community bonds are on a forum. Aside from content, people visit forums because they like the other users. Having a large number of people join up, make a ton of posts, and then leave does nothing to improve that bond. It may even destroy it.
4) Tied in with point one, they're only a short term solution to what is potentially a long term problem. It may look great to have gotten 10k posts in a week, but those are after all only statistics. If you instead reviewed your methods of advertising, sought out flaws and rectified them, it might be a lot more worth while. Investing the money you spent on prizes for the posting competition instead on say... seo tools, could bring about greater results in the long run.
What do you think of this?
1) Posting competitions cause a boom/bust cycle. You get plenty of posts for a week or two, but then once the prize is given out, the people who joined up looking for your money will just jog on. Result? Flat-lining activity.
2) These competitions largely ignore that content is the only sustainable way to attract users. Your forum have interesting discussion-worthy content if it's to get anywhere. By and large, posting competitions attract people who want to make 100 posts in 24 hours to get the prize. They'll post according to the minimum standard required by your rules, and they may not even be interested in the subject matter of your forum. Expect a huge influx into your off topic section, but little improvement anywhere else.
3) They ignore how important community bonds are on a forum. Aside from content, people visit forums because they like the other users. Having a large number of people join up, make a ton of posts, and then leave does nothing to improve that bond. It may even destroy it.
4) Tied in with point one, they're only a short term solution to what is potentially a long term problem. It may look great to have gotten 10k posts in a week, but those are after all only statistics. If you instead reviewed your methods of advertising, sought out flaws and rectified them, it might be a lot more worth while. Investing the money you spent on prizes for the posting competition instead on say... seo tools, could bring about greater results in the long run.
What do you think of this?
