Reviving a dead forum?

[Battou]

Well, I have been at the helm of a forum for two years give or take. My being added to the staff of the site has driven the the hits up but somewhere along the lines I am failing at creating the userbase conversion. How does one go about reviving a dead forum and getting solid active userbase conversion? I'm trying an active recruiting methoed but overall it's failing and standard SEO has faild.

I need some suggestions.

 

[Entré]

I am reviving a forum right now @ www.yourtraffictalk.com and it is always good to offer an amazing service.
We have 38 free posts to your forum, now that has turned a lot of heads.

Give them something that they want mate.

 

[Battou]

That's already poped into my head and I plan on implementing it. I am researching the things I need to do it.

 

[Bossanova]

To revive a dead forum, or not. That is a question most forum admins have at some point. They need to take into consideration certain things. Such as; how many posts does the forum have? Depending on the type of forum, how many staff are needed? Are there already allot of this genre of forum?

Those are a few of the questions.

For your situation, I'm honestly not sure. Some forums have served their purpose, and as such, are just 'dead', and won't be brought back no matter how hard you try.

 

[Battou]

I've answered these questions and suffice it to say I feel this forum is worth fighting to keep alive despite the number of similar sites on the web.

 

[jlistic]

I'm just having issues amping up my forum! In a way it is kind of dead.

 

[Mike1140]

Well best of luck Its not easy since ANYONE can open a forum on any software. People just dont wanna see the same thing.

 

[Battou]

Well best of luck Its not easy since ANYONE can open a forum on any software. People just dont wanna see the same thing.

Well I know how it happened. What happened it a couple of things. The site originally started as a means of separating photography from illustrations so that photographers where not competing with illustrators and visa versa. As a Photography site and forum it holds equal potential as it's parent site did. Problems are, the site developers and owner are not photographers, they are illustrators and anime/cartoon buffs and so to where the initial staff and posters of the site. Now with them all being illustrators and not photographers they lost interest very quickly. Furthermore they where unable to start real photo related conversations. That as you know is a deturrant. The next issue I face is development, I'm still working with the original developers who hold little to no interest in the photo branch resulting in very slow release of new features and bug fixes, Also a deturrant.


Now that the original group of illustrators are basically gone I'm working on rebuilding the initial posters on the site, basically starting from scratch at 1300 posts.

 

[Fullmoon]

At the beginning of the year I revived Headbangers Haven from the depths of hell :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: ... Well not exactly, but it was dead.

I have been dedicated into bringing it back, I have:

Groups/Pages/Profiles on: Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm, Myspace, etc

I used all the forum promotion sites under the sun (Now its active again I only use FP & Wober + a couple of others.)

Joined topsites, Traffic sites like Autoclick, Link referral etc.

Every month requested packages and reviews. (I now just do exchanges, I find them way more helpful to my forum.)

Joined other music forums and affiliated with them (Dont know as I'm waiting for SMF to upgrade their mods) If you have a certain market, joining similar forums and advertising in sections or in your signatures helps alot!

I have a dedicated co-admin, who is the forums savior.

Erm... What else?... ..... Think that is all.

 

[Fergal]

Have you tried sending a PM or email to all members to inform them that the forum is back in action? It would be great if you could include some kind of incentive in the email or PM.

 

[Battou]

Have you tried sending a PM or email to all members to inform them that the forum is back in action? It would be great if you could include some kind of incentive in the email or PM.

Well A PM is out of the question as there is no off site notifications for PM's. An E-mail is in the works. I intend to inform the formar users of the changes the site has undergone over the last year. I do not anticipate a large turnover out of it but if I can get a few of the member to come back it would be helpful.

The incentive program however. I have been using it for the gathering and recruiting of some new members. It's a small token of appriecaition because it's all I can really afford. On the two web sites (Main site portions) we use a prescreening process where new users images are checked by site staff for complyance to site policy before they are made available to the public. This is how we prevent the amount of copyright violations commonly seen on Deviant art. After a short period of time with good approval status the system places the users onto auto approval status allowing them to bypass the APQ and submit their work straight to the public view on the site.

I can manually set a user to auto approval, and that is what I am using as an incentive to the people I recruit. I can not just give this to anyone though.


Another thing I have done is I have asked some of the users I have to go over on to the main site and drop comments on random images. There is a set of notifications that do go off site to users E-mails for when they get comments on images and profiles and a few other things, but they can be turned off in the UCP. I'm hoping that we can get luckey and find a few users with them turned on.


At some time I just might ask for a slightly modified posting package here, I've been debating this for some time but have not yet come to a conclution. What I am thinking is instead of the standard so many topics and posts, perhaps an equal amount of mainsite comments on images on the main site, but that is a deviation from the standard practice and I am not sure if I want to ask for that.

 

[Fergal]

You might as well ask Battou, the worst the package team can do is say no.

A contest might help encourage your members to come back. You wouldn't even need to offer a prize that cost you anything and it could be along the lines of Picture of the Day / Week / Month. Artists of all types like to win prizes and commendations for their work.

 

[Battou]

You might as well ask Battou, the worst the package team can do is say no.

A contest might help encourage your members to come back. You wouldn't even need to offer a prize that cost you anything and it could be along the lines of Picture of the Day / Week / Month. Artists of all types like to win prizes and commendations for their work.

We've considered contests, but coming up with prizes for the contest is difficult to say the least. We don't exactly have the available funding to get and ship tangable prizes. As for the Picture of the day week or month, We have the ability to do this however there is a major flaw in the design. We have a "Featured Artist" box on the main page, the problem is that this honor can be bestowed only once to any given user. Should the contest winner have been featured in the past I would be completely unable to comply, There is no way around it. Our developing team has been working on fixing that but continue to come up empty handed. We also have the individual picture features but....well given how slowly the site moves any image that is remotely good gets that by default just because of the slow activity. That one just seems like little incentive.

 

[Fergal]

You don't have to use the "Featured Artist" box. You can run the contest and announce the winner in another part of the forum.

 

[Battou]

I suppose I could post it in the site news section, that does not get updated much because there is never anything to say.

 

[Fergal]

...An E-mail is in the works. I intend to inform the formar users of the changes the site has undergone over the last year. I do not anticipate a large turnover out of it but if I can get a few of the member to come back it would be helpful

I wouldn't underestimate the potential value of that. You won't get a better target audience for your email, than people who have previously made the effort to join your forum. Be as positive as you can, reflect an air of confidence and enthusiasm regarding the community and give the members a reason to come back. You could even post a draft of your email here, before you mail it out and we will give you some feedback on it.

 

[Battou]

...An E-mail is in the works. I intend to inform the formar users of the changes the site has undergone over the last year. I do not anticipate a large turnover out of it but if I can get a few of the member to come back it would be helpful

I wouldn't underestimate the potential value of that. You won't get a better target audience for your email, than people who have previously made the effort to join your forum. Be as positive as you can, reflect an air of confidence and enthusiasm regarding the community and give the members a reason to come back. You could even post a draft of your email here, before you mail it out and we will give you some feedback on it.

I did...you have, I just have not gotten the oppertunity to reply to the statement

 

[Uphoreka]

To revive a dead forum, try starting some contests or events.