How to increase activity on my board?

[cyimking]

Hi,

I am having tons of trouble with keeping my regular members active on my site. Yes, my staff are very active but I need my regular members to be active. I'm currently doing a giveaway but that isn't increasing activity on the board. As far as content, I am adding more and more topics / "special" content on the daily, but that isn't helping as well. It's like my site is at a max cap. Even when i do gain members, they do not stay active. I mean, the only time members are active is when i throw up the "if you have 50 posts then you can be on the staff team" but once they either make it or do not make it, the members never come back.

Now as far as in special unique content, I am currently working on that but i been to plenty of boards that doesn't have any content but yet have more active members than me. I even been to some that started later than my site but have exceed my site statically. To me, it seems like i am doing something wrong. I am even paying for ads but yet the ads aren't getting me members. We have a twitter for the site that have over 4k followers and again, we haven't gain a single member from twitter yet!

As far as design, I believe that my website's design is pretty unique but that shouldn't really matter knowing that there are sites that haven't upgraded their design in years.

So is there any suggestion on how to increase activity on my board? I mean, I can post all day but after awhile, seeing "cyimking" all down the forums isn't pretty. My staff are active but at the same time, they are suppose to be active. We do gain members but only a few per week and again, they do not stay active for long. The site been alive for 7 months now and I feel like the site should have more than 2 active regular members...

 

[Elenitsa]

Try contests with prizes, try to come with interesting stories, worth continuing, to raise their enthusiasm, ask them what would inspire them...

 

[Kaynil]

I don't know your board so I can't really say much. I think it is important not simply to post to everything or post news constantly but to try to create a community. You need member A and Member B have discussions that help them interact. The more you share opinions with other members and get a feeling of their personalities, the more they feel they start differentiate each of them and the community starts to emerge.

So I suggest you try to make threads that involves making your members opening up to things we can all relate with, for example "how do you deal with.." can be interesting questions, debate topics, etc.

Now not sure if it is the one in your signature but my first impression is that there are too many colours for similar things. This gives the illusion of isolation and can be intimidating for new members. For example Founder and Admin could have similar colours and same with Global and local moderators, that makes a person easier to associate a certain shade with the rank and thus rationalizing better. Well, this is subjective but that is my opinion as a first time visitor.

I guess only being around the community one could point better suggestions. If you are making competitions make sure members have reminders of them while they browse and keep pointing each stage.

Either way good luck with your place.