Well I have a little problem. My forum (link in sig) is about 4 months old and we have been growing pretty good. I get around 5-15 registrations per day, we are close to 1000 members now. We have lots of active members and we usually post about 100 new posts per day, and anywhere from 10-70 threads per day. For a small forum like mine, that is pretty good activity. The problem I have is that the new members that join do not post. Some will hang around and post one or two times, but most just register and never post. I even see new members customize their avatar and profile, but never post. That just does not make sense to me. I am having the one problem I never thought I would have with a forum. I get lots of new members, but it seems they do not want to post or reply to threads. Has anyone else had this little problem, or do you have advice for me? Thanks
I have this problem too. I try to keep everybody active buy having some sort of contest or giveaway. I just send a note to all registered members telling them when a contest is coming up. Help a lot, even though my forum is very small and new.
I host monthly contests, for great prizes. I also have forums for general chat topics like you mentioned. Still, they dont seem to want to participate in the contests or posts.
Its not really a problem, its just the way it is. Ever head of the 90:9:1 rule of forums? 1% of members post a post; 9% of members post occasionally; 90% don't post.
Sounds about right. If you fix this problem let the rest of us know! There's not much you can really do. There are some little things like re-sending the activation email (if you use that) if they haven't activated it within a couple of weeks, or sending everyone your newsletter (though this isn't always well recieved). Energy's best used keeping your active members active I think.
Well I was worried because it seems like the forum is not growing, even thought the amount of members is increasing.
Try influencing them to post by using contests and other forum activity's. Once you get them posting you can start adding more and more stuff that they'll enjoy.
Maybe there's no interesting factor in order for them to be enthusiastic in posting Try having gimmicks like >> Signature of the month or put an arcade etc
I may have misunderstood you. Your problem is that now new members are signing up and not posting, but in the past new members were posting. And now your stuck with all your old members posting and no new blood? That is a problem. It may not be the case though. That would be quite unusual, it may just appear to be that way. If that is the case though then you'll need to try and get them involved and hooked as soon as possible. Send them a pm welcoming them and maybe asking a question (like "Where are you from?"), when you get a response that's them involved, reply to their message and try to get a disscusion going, before suggesting they get posting on the forum - that's them hooked. Since they may only sign in once or twice before you never see them again this will only work if you catch them soon after registration. It would be a good idea to get your mods and/or trusted regulars to do the same thing. Keep it coordinated though, don't want a new member getting 3 or 4 identical pms from different people. Hope it goes well for you whatever you do.