Here are some tips I've watched increase my forums' participation many hundred fold... 1. Buy vBulletin and vBSEO. You'll get more pages indexed and more traffic. 2. Set up promotions in vBulletin so that users get a special badge when they reach 10 posts, 50, 100, 500 and 1000. I increased new user participation a great deal with this. 3. Run a contest where you give away something like an ipod or tshirt with the forum logo on it, to every person who reaches 500 posts. 4. Start controversial discussions in your forums. 5. When starting a new forum, keep the number of forums/categories down to no more than 8 if possible. This helps the site not look too dead/young. 6. Run a newsletter. Send it out monthly at least. This will help keep people active and united as a community. Plus it gives you an opportunity to presell for affiliate products, etc.. NOTE don't be to hard in promotions or your users will stop reading. Save hard sell for landing pages on your site. 7. For a better newsletter system, buy ListMail and get a freelancer to connect it to the vbulletin database so that when a new member registers, they are automatically inserted into your "prospects" autoresponder and you can use that to help you convert them so whatever type of sale you want. 8. Don't be in the background. Be the face of your community, and even go as far as introducing yourself as the host of the site. Never call yourself admin. Your username in the forums should be your name at least. 9. Integrate your forum into a CMS like drupal or joomla so you can build static content pages to offer more value to your users. Make it a portal site and try to become the authority in your forum's niche. I have had success with this model, so I highly recommend it. 10. Answer as many questions as you can for your users. 11. Ask questions and make polls. 12. Pick a moderator to help you handle the forums eventually, so you can focus on building the site bigger and attracting more people, and offering them all much more value than just a forum. 13. Once you have reached a certain mass, add to your business model by introducing paid subscriptions for access to private members-only forums, information products, tools, and other added-value features. NOTE: Let your current users have the private forum access for free and convert some of your forums into private. Don't make new forums. You want members to see a lot of activity and get involved when they enter a private forum, so convert an older forum into a new members only one. 14. One thing I forgot to mention earlier is essential - Show conditional messages in your forums to encourage registration, posting, etc.. I've outlined this more in my blog post here I hope this helps!
Very good and informative post. I agree with everything you said, my forum runs vBulletin and vBSEO. Although you should also do some custom SEO even after installing vBSEO. I am in the process of introducing forum contests and have special ranks for users who post
Giving away an I pod after reaching 500 posts. Well, I am not if this is a serious stament or not, but I doubt if that is the right way to go about promoting a forum. Perhaps, you could give away an IPod to the first person reaching 500 posts. Still a very good post, though.
I think it's fair enough to give ipod to every person who reach 500 posts. In my personal opinions, it's pretty hard enough to reach that 500 posts alone.
500 posts is not difficult to reach, one of my forums has over 100 users with 500+ posts and its less than 1 year old. That is WAY too much cash to be tossing away.
If you tell people that they will get a prize for so many posts, doesn't that cause people to create junk posts?
Even so, I'd hate to have to look through someone's 500 posts to see if each one met the terms. Yech! And if you have a lot of members that could become your full time job. Double yech!
Oh i agree, i think that giving an ipod to the first user that has 500 is a MUCH better idea than each member at 500. I think the best is a referral system and pay the person who has the most referrals. Each referral must have at least "x" number of posts to be eligible. Just an idea.
nice i had skiped vbseo in my article i would re add something more on vbseo, very well written will add some reps
Some good tips, thanks. I am currently offering a $200 contest at my (brand) new forum, but it doesn't seem to be working that well. Is the offer of free money not enough these days? Forum is here: www.brightideas-mag.com/forum
Most users ever online was 2 on Sat Nov 25, 2006 10:19 pm What are you doing to promote your site? You can do all the promos and special offers you want, but if no one knows about the site, they are useless.
Do not assume that if you post $200 contest traffic will follow. You have to market your forum to make people aware of this contest and that's why it is said, "Marketting is the toughest job in any business". I would also suggest that remove the "Who is online" block, because it clearly shows your forum in new and has no users. So even if people come, many won't bother getting active. Do some dummy stats. Initially to get stuff rolling, you have to put up dummy data just to fill up your forum. By the way, can I get a advertising spot in your bright idea magazine, if it is Canada???
Another thing you can do is set up a points system where people earn them for posting then can buy special stuff with them like customizing the color of their username in the forums.