Posting: Your Opinions

Hey, I thought I would ask your guys and gals opinions on posting on forums. Below I will post various, lets say "None Natural" ways to get members, threads, and posts. Everyone who as an opinion on any of these, please share your thoughts.

Paid Posting: Paying a person, maybe more to register and make posts. They may sometimes make multiple accounts. You pay and recieve posts.

Multiple Accounts: Rather you making multiple accounts and posting, or other staff members making multiple accounts and postings. This also covers paying members to make multiple accounts.

Post Exchange: Finding other forum admins, and asking for a post exchange. Exchanging maybe five for five, more or less. Also maybe making multiple accounts?

Posting Contests: Paying a winner of a contest you may run. I mean by making a contest lets say here on DP. The members register, post, and once the winner is paid they go.

Automated Posts: Using software that takes content off the Internet and then posts it on a forum. Basically bots posting pre-made content.

Thats your opinions. I will post mine later, the reason I have made this is so everyone can see. What everyone thinks about these.

Thanks,
BlueEew.

 

Paid Posting - This can be good, but sometimes scammers charge you and dont post.

Multiple Accounts - Takes to much time. You can be active on them all at the same time!

Post Exchange - Prob. the best way.

Posting Contests - Will get copied content and spam

Automated Posts - Google might find you!

 

Thanks for your opinions.

As posting contests always produced spam?

 

Well, change it to 'may get copied content and spam;

 

I see, perhaps if the contest was planned well with strict rules then I could aviod this.

 

I don't recommend paid posting. Multiple accounts can be a good way to start off, but it's easier to have friends post. Automated content risks duplicate content penalties, and posting contests can result is spam. If you do a posting contest right it can be productive though.

 

I don't like paid posting much. If you have a new forum and you hire 10 people to make 20 posts, it would look a little weird. Now you have 10 people who simultaneously made 20 posts, and were never seen on the forum again.

 

If you are starting out, paid posting works well *if* you find one or two people who know and are passionate about the topic of your forum. You can then pay that person(s) to post at your forum on an ongoing basis. You can then sign up with 1-3 accounts and before you know it you have 5 users talking on a whole variety of topics which can very quickly accrue many hundreds of posts. I have used this method to build forum activity from scratch on several forums.

The sort of paid posting that is not very successful (in my experience) is the sort you buy on this very forum in batches of 20 or 50 posts at 5-10c per post.

The situation is a little different if you already have a working forum with > xxxx posts. In this scenario, buying small batches of posts from competent posters can work well to stimulate action.

As for contests, you have to be a little more imaginative than a straightforward "highest number of posts gets a prize" type deal. Contests should be crafted so that they encourage users to return to your forum often (for example, to check on progress etc.), not to spam the living sh*t out of your forum. Once you have them returning on a regular basis, you have the fight half won. Then you can concentrate your efforts on coming up with ways to get them to participate in other areas of the forum and in other ways besides your contest etc.

 

What is your opinions on them if the forum already as like 50,000 posts and some regular members? Say if you wanted to give the traffic/activity a boost so you can advertise and the viewers will see an active forum?

 

Paid posting-I have used it some and have not been very impressed with the results honestly. They did the job and made the agreed upon # of posts, but the quality of posts were pretty lame.

Multiple Accounts - Did this and got sick and tired of talking to myself, but it does seem to work to a degree. By this I mean it brings people to the forum and they at least view the threads.

Post Exchange - Have not tried it...If I can't think of something to say on my forum, then I probably can't think of something to say on your forum.

Posting Contests - Have not tried it and probably never will

Automated Posts- Have not tried it.

The best luck I have had is asking/begging my online friends to go and post on the forum.

Another thing that I do is encourage other webmasters within the same niche to come and post on the forum. After they make x amount of posts and have been a member for x amount of days they are allowed to post a live signature link (just like here on DP). As a result I have had a number of people with related sites come and make their requisite # of posts, wait the required # of days, add their signature link, and never return again. Not the best solution, but not the worst either.

 

Paid Posting: From what I've seen, it's pretty bad quality... though, at least the posters are human!

Multiple Accounts: It's better then nothing, but heh, just make sure you keep your accounts separate. I tried this once and ended up posting as the wrong person...

Post Exchange: It can work, especially if you are trading with a board you have an interest in, and with someone who has an interest in your board. Though, quality (on both sides) can be questionable at times.

Posting Contests: Contests are good, but keep in mind that if it's based simply off post count, you'll be flooded with one-liners. We are trying "post of the month" contests where the members nominate a post and all the nominated posts are then voted on. This gets rid of the one-liner issue.

Automated Posts: They are inhuman, and unresponsive to further discussion. A forum SHOULD be a community, and thus far, bots can not belong. An RSS feed can get some conversations going, but even that has it's limits.

 

Id have to say post exchanges would be my fave option. Other forum owners tend to know the importance of quality posts and seem to be less spammy.

Forum contests are great but I wouldnt advise them unless you have a decent amount of members to start with or once the contest is over very few will stay members.

Just my 2 cents.

 

Thanks for your opinions, nice to see them. Anyone else have any views on these?

 

Optimising SEO

 

where can I download this software that automates forum post? i'm interested. Thank you.

 

Most of them are not free. However make a search here at Digita Point, you will find some.

 

Nothing beats having originally passionate members, however paid posting if done properly can yield good results to get the ball rolling.

 

Just wondering, as anyone here ever had paid posting on forums that already have none paid members? I mean to give the forums a boost?