How do you attaract valuable members?

[sportastephanie]

I have a board, I moved from Zetaboards to IPBfree and I can't seem to get any members who want to post daily or any true staff members. What tricks do you use to try and get your members to keep coming back and post? Click the banner in my signature to go to my board and see for yourself. It's just your average anime forum but with a Tokyo theme to it. Got any tips I can use to get some "true" members?

 

[Watch Me Sink]

Moving from one host to another will no doubt lose members, unless there is a full backup. Just create discussion like normal and they will post.

 

[el canadiano]

I personally don't find remotely-hosted forums professional. That just being me. IPBFree isn't real IPB, either (just an edited version of an old IPB when it used to be free). I understand not everyone can afford a real IPB license now that it's commercial, though. Even just a phpBB, SMF, or MyBB forum self-hosted looks better and is a lot more flexible. There are many free hosts out there which both offer cPanel, a professional control panel, and no forced ads. SMF's great for someone who does not know any HTML/PHP coding, as you can upgrade, upload skins, and even install mods by uploading packages directly from the zip you download from the site. I doubt you'll require instructions for that.

Anyways, if you need help, feel free to ask me through PM or one of my IM contacts.

 

[Fredward]

What tricks do you use to try and get your members to keep coming back and post?

I think 'tricks' is the wrong term to use really. If the content is there, users will stay. Currently you simply don't have enough content going on to interest people, so they won't stay.

That java chat thing really slowed down my browser too, if i stumbled across the site naturally and didn't click your sig link on purpose i'd probably have hit the x straight away. Maybe give chat as an option, but don't force it on people straight away?

 

[fantanoice]

Perhaps you're not advertising in the right places?

You should be joining up to forums with a similar theme to yours and making friends. Heck, incorporate a few social networking sites in there. Network with the audience you're targeting and link them over to your site.

Promotion forums like this may get you a couple of posts, but it's unlikely that you'll get active members from here.

 

[David]

One easy thing I noticed: no image or major link in your signature. Not many people read long sentences, so for example, look at my signature, its clean and people will tend to look at simplicity, rather than read a long sentence. Add an image/banner of your forum into your signature and that will attract people's attention.

 

[Pinky]

One easy thing I noticed: no image or major link in your signature. Not many people read long sentences, so for example, look at my signature, its clean and people will tend to look at simplicity, rather than read a long sentence. Add an image/banner of your forum into your signature and that will attract people's attention.

I think you have a good point with the sig image there rather than text. I tend to skip reading text in signatures on forums unless it is highly noticable for some reason. Images always get my attention.

I know there are a lot of sites out there right now, including my own struggling for members and I feel one factor is the social networking sites. They seem to much more popular than forums although I don't know why, maybe it is because on a social networking site, you can do more of what you like without all the forum rules we we may entail. A person has their own page too which usually has a huge amount of activities and personalization for them to do. Maybe they see the social networking sites as better as they 'have more' things to do, I don't know.

I post a lot of content weekly but still it does not attract members and posting. It is intriguing as it makes you wonder why not after all your continued hard work.

I think if you keep posting or advertising in the right areas of your cliche then eventually your forum will progress but sometimes patience is hard pressed. :yes:

Good luck!

 

[SettledHate.]

I advertise on Facebook to certain age groups. 😉

 

[ChatBox]

Advertise and add the most active people to an special group which has special things.