Focus on The Niche

[Tucker933]

Here's a good explanation of something I've been trying to convey here for a while now: https://www.feverbee.com/appeal/

Don't start broad, or even have a broad focus as your end goal, because appealing to a large market is counter-intuitively the hardest way to gain activity with. You become significant in nothing when your focus is everything, so it's not worth making everything your competition as a result.

Find something you can do well for a small group, and diversify from there only when the existing activity can support it. If you diversify too quickly, you spread your activity so thin that your discussions will suffer from a lack in audience, and activity will begin to fall, reinforcing the problem you've now created. Members want to post when they think their content will be seen, so focus first on creating a good exposure.

If activity falls steadily, consolidate or shift focus, rather than expand in an attempt to appeal to more.

 

[TradingCardMakers]

This was a very nice read, thanks OP!

 

[MasterA]

Very nice post. Lets say that someone has managed to become the biggest website/forum in their niche, don't you think it would be a good idea to add a secondary focus? For example, if your forum is aimed at Webmasters and you already have 20,000 active members but there are only limited amount of webmasters in the world. In order to expand further, you will need to have a secondary focus in order to attract other people who are not webmasters.

 

[Shannon Apple]

Absolutely and it's also something that I've been saying to people who are struggling with this. In fact, it's even better if you can somehow get a small group of people together before you start a forum, decide on a focus between you and go from there. If you're all interested in the same subject, it's much easier to build your little community up because you will have real replies to topics that are community focused. It's much harder these days to start a forum without having some sort of back-up.

@MasterA: Aye, but a webmaster forum might be best to still stick to topics that interest webmasters, such as computer programming.

 

[Tucker933]

Lets say that someone has managed to become the biggest website/forum in their niche, don't you think it would be a good idea to add a secondary focus? For example, if your forum is aimed at Webmasters and you already have 20,000 active members but there are only limited amount of webmasters in the world. In order to expand further, you will need to have a secondary focus in order to attract other people who are not webmasters.

Certainly. Sections can get too busy and need to be diversified within a niche, and extra niches can be tackled, particularly complimentary ones. The problem I was really trying to cover is that low activity is too often addressed by broadening the audience, rather than refining or shifting focus altogether. Almost any audience is capable sustaining a forum; the problem is generally appealing to them, and you can always improve that. Spreading insufficient activity even thinner by broadening the audience, in an attempt to improve that activity, makes both marketing less effective and the community look more inactive, even if activity doesn't actually fall. The wider the range of subjects, the more activity is required to sustain it. I know you know that, and I'm sure it's a "duh" to others when explained, but so often it's approached backwards, causing people to end up prematurely killing their forums in an attempt to save them.

Activity before diversifying, and if you can't improve appeal to reach sufficient activity (you really should be able to), try doing so for a different niche altogether instead of tacking a new one onto the dead weight.