Growing a forum community, how challenging could it be when it comes to visitors?

In growing a forum there are several stages that a forum owner usually undergo when it comes to his visitors.

1.) Attracting internet traffic to become visitors of their forum.
2.) Encouraging those visitors to become members of their forum
3.) Leading his members to become contributory members
4.) Retaining his contributory members to remain active
5.) Identifying leaders from your contributory members to set as role models for new members to follow.

From this five stages, which do you think is the most challenging for forum owners to do when it comes to their visitors?

 

Step 3 would be the hardest in my opinion, it's very hard to get active members that would post daily.

 

How many times will you say "contributory members"? Jeez.

I'm always curious to know when people spout their crap what's the most successful forum they own.

Your blog about forum traffic doesn't even have a forum.

 

Hey RectangleMan, long time no see. When I see threads like this, and the op does not state that he/she has a forum, I just grin and look the other way. We both know how long, how much work, how much frustration,,, it takes to build a community.

To be perfectly honest, I seriously doubt I will start another forum - EVER. I'am more content with my blog. There is no gripping, no reported post, no members complaining about each other,,,, and the list goes on and on.

Even though gamblinglord has touched on some good topics, I think he has done just that - "touched" - on the topics. Rarely do I see people talking about how to deal with problem members and keeping the forum clean of copyright infringing material.

One of my biggest problems right now is getting people to stop with the copy and paste jobs. It does not do any good to build a forum if your sued for copyright infringement and closed.

 

I think converting guests into members is the hardest aspect. Getting traffic is easy, as is keeping them, but getting them to contribute is the tough bit that needs to be acomplished.

 

Probably getting visitors to become contributing members and not spammers. If users see enough reason to join the forum and participate the rest will eventually follow but that doesn't make any of them easy.

Well said!

 

Setting up a forum is the hardest part. I have set up my using both PhpBB and SMF. Unfortunately, a fresh install of both those platforms results to automated posts by the bots. That's why i now used the free service used by Invision Free Power Board.

 

All this can be avoided by focusing on a niche!

 

Stage three & four definitely are the most challenging. No doubt about it.

 

It's not hard at all. Besides, the free versions of IPB are not affiliated at all with IPS and are now two versions behind.

 

Stage 3.....

I am getting.. around 3 members/day..but none of them r posting

 

Funny how "managing the forum once it's active" isn't in the top 5, where it should be #1. Those 5 things you listed are baby steps. If you get on top of those and get your forum going, brace yourself for the hard part

My forum pulls in about 6000 posts a day and around 500-600 members logon daily. I'm on it several hours a day, by far the thing I do most with my life. I look back on my days of getting it established {after our move to a new address} and helping pick up activity and grow to a thriving size, it wasn't nearly as much work then as it is now. But it is a labour of love.

 

Fact is, a forum community is just like a garden. You have to plant the seeds before it even starts the grow...
The main seed is the content - and without it, you'll never be able to build a forum community.

Visitors come when there's content and they have a reason to join and be apart of the community. Like if you own a gaming forum, and you're posting interviews,reviews that nobody else has, then that'll be an easy way to attract visitors.

There's no simple way to build a forum community.

 

I also prefer content. You don't need any promotion. You just put content and the members will come automatically.

 

I'm a forum admin. I've started dozens of forums and I'll continue making more. Kev you've hit a success but you did so with a lot of content creation which will translate to a blog nicely. Me personally..I'm not a content creator. I'm a poster. I love replying to posts. Just seems my personality.

I don't agree. You said you build a forum "community" and I think the sense of community is the most important factor to a successful forum. I've started a buttload of forums with very little content.

 

That is the hardest part. Attracting traffic is the easy part, turning that traffic into people who sign up is the more difficult part. Once you've mastered 2) then 3, 4 and 5 follow pretty easy.

 

No.3 is the hard one..
If this is not managed, the forum will die.
Or ,,
Come at it from a whole new angle, where users are discouraged from posting. You set your forum up so that really good posters really want to post. They receive a reward so as to encourage them to post. Top posters at my forum are given their own section, they run, can sub divide, and manage their section with little interference from the forum owner. Post new topics and post reply buttons are hidden or are hard to find. This ensures that only relevant stuff is added to main topic boards, and pushes small talk to the general chat board where buttons are visible. After some time you might find that people are coming to you and asking for a section so they can post. This happens to me a lot, unfortunately I am very choosey (my board subject can be hard to find and kinda specialised) so I find that I have turned posters down in the past.

I find that the lack of spammy posts and the clean layout keeps people coming back. Users seem to like the fact that they know exactly what they will find in a particular posters section.

 

You could try something like autoforumposter.com

Here's a link to the download some one posted on "another forum" ! bit.ly/fYWzDT

 

Sure, if you want a fake forum. It won't get you long term success. I think that people who want to take this approach are just better off putting their efforts into a blog. Forums are wonderfully rewarding for those really into the subject of the forum and the community that grows around it, but it's a lot of work.

 

Nobody likes a forum generated with fake posts.