need some advice guys. i run a mental health peer support site but things have become a bit stagnant. we are stuck on 130 members and of those only around a dozen are regular posters. i know there's a 'market' out there for us are there are similar sites with several thousand members. thats clearly a very long term goal but i would like to take us into the several hundreds. can any of you guys help at all?
sorry, forgot to add, we are non profit making and dont seek to make money out of our forum. we only want to provide support for sufferers of mental health. any profits we ever make in the future would go to a mental health charity of our members choosing.
thanks for the reply. we have a resources section full of articles on various forms of mental illness, medication, therapy and helplines, links to mental health charities etc. also, most replies in threads tend to be free info from members with similar problems. can you suggest anything else? i would be extremely grateful.
If people are seeking help or answers to questions, you may want to have a few expert members who can asnwer their questions and threads promptly. For example, I use a lot of business forums because there are others there that can answer some questions I have, at the same time I can help people who are less experience than me. I believe forums follow this logic.
makes sense. important distinction though: we do not offer professional advice, nobody is on our site in a professional capacity. we offer peer support only. so really, anyone who suffers, or has suffered from the form of illness the member is posting about is an expert. we are linked to a similarly sized site whom we share info/advice with but this has done nothing really to improve our traffic. is it permitted to give you our url to let you have a look? i did read the terms and conditions but must confess to being slightly baffled by them! i know i need a certain number of posts/days as a member/ rep number to have a sig, but am i permitted to write my url in a post?
But, even if it's one person helping each other like AA or NA forums, it's still useful and many people will find that benefitial. I am making a lot of assumptions here, but if somene is sufffering or even needs advice, they can speak to someone in your forum and get annonymous advice without giving out their identity and privacy. I think you should be able to pm me, and I'll take a look. I have to confess I am no expert in this area. All you'll get is my opinion.
Got it. I have nothing bad to say about the site. It seems fairly user friendly. I have noticed that busy sites attract people. I can tell your site is not that buy by some last post dates. Secondly, are geographic or are you targeting an international audiance. I see odd post from the Uk about NHS info but mainly US. I suppose like anything to make it work properly, look at it like a business (I know you are a charity). If people don't know about you how will they find you? SEO comes to mind. Getting other non profit organisations involved to sponsor you, for example in the UK you have MIND (a charity). Also, why would I use your forum above others mental health ones? I can't really answer that one. But what I can say is I go to some forums like this which are vcery busy and big and I go to others because they feel more personal, I know most of the names like a small village. I would seriously consider investment in SEO, you could do most of it yourself.
we are trans atlantic really. im in scotland and my co-admin is in the states. we want to be reachable to anyone with mental health issues, where ever they are. geography needent limit us i dont think. most of our users are from the states or the uk but some are from ireland, india, russia. i think its the sense of community that separates us from the bigger sites. trouble is, the community is too small. how do i promote the sense of community to others without spamming? lol. i was under the impression that invision pb did the SEO stuff automatically? again thanks for your help. neil
SEO doesn't happen automatically. If I were you I would invest some time on reading about it. You don't have to become an expert. You can do a lot yourself. There is a lot free material around.