Getting a new forum off the ground.

[Shannon Apple]

I'm actually going to give a little advice to people based on my own experiences. You might disagree, but I actually see some people doing things that are quite wrong. People on our forum have been asking us to add new boards and the answer is "No". Instead, we add new prefixes to general and tell them if there are enough topics under it, we'll separate them into their own forum. The forum is 4 months old, that's not enough time to go mad with adding boards. It's a slow process building a site and you have to be patient. I see people adding 30+ boards before there are any posts at all.

You've got your new forum up and running.

Don't add a gazillion boards. Start off with general boards for your niche. Choose areas that are popular. Wait for them to fill up with threads, then expand into separate boards. For example, if it's a gaming forum, you don't need a forum for every popular game out there. Use prefixes. The more forums you have, the emptier your site is going to seem and the less likely people are actually going to stay.

Clutter. Don't try to add too much information. I'm a graphic designer. I do work in the industry and trust me on this one. Try to be as focused as possible. Sometimes adding a front page is a very bad idea. People click on your site and don't bother with the second click to take them to the forum. Create as few clicks as possible. Unless you've got a successful blog up and running as a front page and your forum is supposed to be secondary, don't add a front page. At least not until you've become a stable little community and can afford to experiment with front pages.

Mods. Don't recruit mods outside of your forum. Wait. Your forum needs one mod, you! When people start to sign up, offer them a special status and priveleges for helping you launch your site. Get them to recruit friends as "beta posters." Give them a hidden forum (not a staff forum) where you can communicate with the "beta posters" and as a place that they will always have for helping you when the forum was new. If one or two of those initial people stand out as being particularly helpful, ask them to be mods. People from the outside don't give a toss about your site. They want a silly position of power OR they are usually too busy with their own projects and think they can help out another site with great intentions, but you will find that it won't work. Those are usually the two types that you'll find when you recruit for unpaid positions.

Keep your members engaged. Be transparent with your founding group, listen to their ideas. Even if their ideas are bad, still engage with them and talk through how you could expand on those ideas and turn them into good ideas. The end idea could be something totally different, but it's important to allow that contribution and communication. If people feel like they are actually being successful and appreciated, they will continue doing what they are doing.

Don't expect your founders to do the work for you. You're going to have to do most of it yourself. That's important to remember. As soon as you drop the ball and get lazy, they will all go inactive.

Good luck.

 

[Adieu]

Nice article. Thanks for sharing your tips with us. I agree that too many forums can get overwhelming. If the index page runs on forever I probably will just move along to something less mind-boggling.

 

[Forces of Steel]

Your forum will have a much harder time getting off the ground, if the focus is heavily saturated by social media pages. Most people don't even bother to lurk on forums anymore. Just telling the truth, based on what I and many others have experienced. Why are more and more people inquiring about (lack of) forum activity these days? The environment has clearly changed, and most forums just aren't good enough to keep the Web dinosaurs or the smartphone tykes checking back. That, and the fact that anyone's grandma and her dog can start a forum.

 

[Shannon Apple]

@Forces of Steel Twitter is not doing well on the grand scale of things and FaceBook is slowly losing popularity. I don't think that format is going to maintain itself forever. People are getting tired of how narcissistic and intrusive it all is. Don't know what will replace the current format though. That kinda scares me. XD

The problem isn't necessarily "dinosaurs," it's people who just don't want to discuss anything. I actually remember when Facebook became popular. I saw the change in the younger members signing up. 13-16 year olds weren't interested in anything on the forum, they just wanted to post things like "this is cool." We ended up nuking the fun and games section on the site in an attempt to turn it back into a discussion site and in the hope those types would just go away. (One of the reasons for nuking it) They did. Forum activity slumped, but as discussions improved, the right kind of people started signing up again and veteran members started posting more.

Our members are aged 15-35 in general with a small handful of older people. If people in their 20s and 30s are dinosaurs, then there isn't any hope. XD On social media they can't even care to check if a news source is true before sharing it. I've actually put up statuses about it because it pissed me off and my friends have stopped doing it.

I hate to say it like this, but while facebook is awesome as a means of keeping in touch with people, it's also saturated with the kind of dumb shitposters that would never have used forums years ago anyway. Those are the type of people that you don't want posting on your forum because they just want to throw comments everywhere. ^^

 

[Deleted member 29780]

Great advice! Thank you very much 🙂

 

[Forces of Steel]

I see what you're trying to say, but believe me, people still have healthy, long-winded discussions on social media groups. You just have to find the right people who aren't swallowed up by the stereotypical narcissism of those places. I also find that you can find more rare content on social media than on forums. That's because it's just a much easier format. Also, Reddit is another reason why most new forums are just having it really hard these days. One account for all forums...

There are just as many shitposters on forums, too. Nuking the shitposters is a good idea, but most people are very picky with joining new forums. I've been personally told by many people I've invited over to one of my forums that if I can get dozens and dozens more people participating, then they'll join. So, just make a bunch of dummy accounts or pay people to post?

I mean, the very reason I joined Forum Promotion in the first place was to see if I could get more people to visit my forums. I'd exhausted the social media invitations, only to realize I was fighting a losing battle.

 

[Shannon Apple]

Well, the thing about promotion forums is that people actually come here to promote their forum or to find out a little on how to improve the way they promote their forum. Places like FP are awesome for expanding on what you already know, but they aren't a great place to recruit members because they attract the same kind of people. People who already have forums to run. I've had a few people join from here alright who like my site and post on and off, or join in the chatroom, (we do have a chatroom full of crazy but loveable bastards) but they also have their own forums, so that means that they're not very invested in the community. Most of our members are people that have come from our old site, or found us via a search, or were given the link by a friend.

SC is slowly growing, only at 220 members atm, but I do think that is natural for only 4 months. As time goes on, we hope that it will grow.

People who only want to join super active forums aren't really worth it, so tell them to skip to the hedge. And meh I couldn't do dummy accounts even if I wanted to. The cute feckers would see right through me. Some of them have known me for more than 10 years XD. But it's not a bad idea to ask mods to create one new topic every day. Or if you have several mods, get each one to consciously create AT LEAST one every week and try to reply to any new topics yourself to push discussion along. Sometimes all it needs is continuous fresh discussions. If you post too many new topics at once, they won't get posts, so it's a sort of balance. I did look at your forum though and it looks like you do have active members there, so you can build on it. ^^