Best way to get quality members for forums

This may have been posted before but I couldn't find a topic on it...

I've used several techniques on different forums and I really haven't found anything that worked very well.

Paid Posting - People leave as soon as you stop the payment plans
Referral Competitions - The referrals never do more than a few posts
Profit Sharing - People get annoyed with low turnout of money and leave

Does anyone have any other ideas for this?

 

Depends on the type of forum... Target something new and useful, advertise, and you should see some results

 

I agree hold a few community competitions from time to time, provide something extra for your users.

- Meti

 

What kind of competitions do you suggest though? I was trying to think of some, but I couldn't really formulate any...

 

Does your forum use reputation points like DP? If so, offer an iPod to the user that has the most reputation points by Christmas

 

Now that would be for such a short notice --- I don't believe it would be a successful competition any way. I was more thinking like a referral competition where a valid referral must complete 10 posts, good and quality posts.

Regards,
Meti

 

It's a good idea but not all people give reputation for useful posts...

and we are trying to do a referral competition for money but there are only a few people doing it...

 

Have you tried running any contests? You can try The admin zone to help you with your new forum. Here's a good article with a a few tips to starting an online community.

 

It may be a good idea but it would be a short notice and not really a competition spirit would get involved, also the reputation system would be abused badly.

- Meti

 

Speaking of the reputation thing... Is that feature available in BBPress?

 

I've never used BBPress, however I'm quite sure there are at least one reputation modification available for it, if it's not a default feature on that platform. Try their support.

- Meti

 

What other contests could you run?

I know referral, last post, etc but what else?

 

I can keep counting contests you could run, for example, design contests can refer lots of designers (if advertised well), article and publishing on other users blogs, perhaps they need to write 150 words article about your site and publish it on as many blogs as they can, if the blog is related in your niche it could refer some quality members.

- Meti

 

The creation of a community relies on people finding your site and finding it active and engaging. The challenge is of course getting it there. Contests are good for getting an already active community further engaged but unless you are running an enormous payout then it's unlikely to have much effect. Post exchanges are a good way of getting more peopel to your board, but like with paid posting the reality is that most will leave after they have fulfilled the commitment for posting.

 

Excellent put edr!

I know for a fact that some users just join for the competitions however, there's actually ways in order to make them stay on your board. It depends if you offer them something, perhaps, offer them unique articles for both newbies and advanced users.

You must offer something other communities don't in order to encourage a user to signup and join the discussions, that's the hard part with a forum.

- Meti