Messageboards

Hey all... question about messageboards... how do you grow them?

for example, this messageboard is massive - hugely successful and flourishing, but how long did it take to grow? How was it started? How and why were users drawn to it? Obviously the creator didn't make it and then suddenly 50,000 people joined... so what happened?

My messageboard is 9 months old and has about 3-5 posts a day, about 300 registered members and 1000 posts... is this alright...good or bad? Is this to be expected and along the lines of this messageboard?

Thanks!

 

Time is what you need...then marketing to market your forum.

 

Someone asked this a few days ago. The majority of people say it was luck. This board offered nothing really unique that others boards didn't have. However with good promotion and of course luck the members make the forum grow just by posting really good articles.

 

Unique contents play a major role in developing message boards.Try to post more and more articles and comments in the name of your board and it'll automatically grab the attention of people.

Make sure your site is indexed by search engines properly and if it's not try do more seo,only white hat.As search engines pull lot of unique visitors,you'd unique before search engines too.

Any way quality content alone plays the real job rather than anything

 

Forums always seem to have a lot of guests... how do you convert them into members?

 

Simply visit the developers forum and dld and install the "force login" mod or else similar.Or else set permission to view forums only to registered ones.The benefit is search engine will index your pages.But only registered members can access it.So guest should be forced to join your board at any cost.Also provide incentives of cheap goods to registered ones,.

Result is you'll get more members

 

But if you make people join to view, wouldn't some people not want to go through with joining if they don't know how good the content is?

 

Message boards are not easy to start, most new administrators end up giving up since they are not growing in just matters of days, according to what they were planned for. If you think that you can get tons of members just by installing software and adding fency mods, then your wrong. You'll need to be unique, have budget for expenses and contests. Users are drawn to a particular forum if and only if they offer something unique that other competitors don't.

Give them a reason to join and give them some sort of incentive. Once you get settled with your forum, you should just keep working hard at posting new content, and just keeping memberbase happy!

 

I've been struggling with this myself lately, and have come to realize that content is king. You have to have a bunch of really good articles / posts to draw people to your site, then make it very easy to join and stay.

For the first year it seemed like I was just talking to myself

Post a good article, then digg, stumble and furl it and see if that can get you some people.

 

As i said,forums get lot of traffic from search engines only.As our pages get indexed,automatically search engines display the contents of our pages with the search results.

A person who seeking a specific info'd really join you and he won't feel it ugly.This method really works and another benefit is you'd get only useful members not spammers and bots.

personally i run a forum.what i'm getting is only meagre members,but i'm happy as all of them are contributing

 

I think its good that good content = more users... that is the way it should be. I guess hard work pays off!...

Now...(1) - can anyone tel me about stumbleupon, etc? Are these sites actually useful or is it all marketing blurb...?

Also...(2) when I go to stumbleupon, I can't add my website - I realise I don't understand how I should be going about adding my pages - can anyone help me?

Also....(3) How can I add those little stumbleupon, digg, etc, pictures below my messageboard messages so users can clik on them?

And finally (4) what's stopping me having multiple usernames and 'digging' or 'stumbling' my own sites again and again?

thank you kind people!

 

Try www.sharethis.com ....

 

Well, every now and they I see these threads asking how to grow a huge forum or message board. Most of the members here and not just here are wondering how DP and all the other well-known forums got so big.

Let me tell you what my take is on the topic. In order to grow a viable community like in this case a forum or a message board you will have to nurture this community like a little baby. You will have to nurture it till it's big enough to take on its own. If you want to own a forum capable of living on its own you will have to create a community that builds buzz and excitement. How do you do that?

Like all new forums you are probably wondering how to attract people, right? When fishing you use bait to lure the fish! That is exactly what you need to do here. You will have to seed your forum with some posts, articles, tips made by you or maybe by hired staff. Either way you need to have these initial seeding posts. Make sure that these seed posts have an open-ended question or a thought provoking thesis statement that will provoke and encourage people to reply once they read them. You could also hire article writers or bloggers to start a discussion on your forum or message board just to get things started and propel the community to a higher level.

This is not all. Once you go through this initial stage you will, hopefully, get some users registered and they will start posting on your forums. Don't just leave them alone in the dark! Interact with them. hire some moderators to reply to their posts or maybe you could do that yourself. Make comments on the posts, if necessary post remarks or compliments. This will encourage your user base to participate more in the community building process. And then again, you can always ask for clarification and a follow-up questions. This will expand the database of Q&As in your forum and first time visitors are browsing the forum they will see it as a credible and expanding community, a community everyone wants to join.

The time will come when you will feel the need to hire staff to look for particular things. Hire moderators, once your forum becomes a huge community it will be absolutely impossible for you to deal with the things yourself. And if you do not manage to handle the forum it will eventually start going downhill and you don't want that, right?

In the very beginning it is really important that you do not start with too many forums. Do not go for 10-20 forums! Start with just 3-4 forums. The more posts in less forums will give people the impression of the forum being busy. People love participating in things that look or appear busy. You can always expand or split the forums on a later stage.

Start running contests. Giving an incentive or reward for posting and participating by contributing to the community evolution is what you need. Giving away rewards for a best post in category, best idea, best resource, most posts, etc will make people post even more.

 

Stumbleupon is extremely useful.Out of 1500 hits i'm getting to my proxy site,1000 more are from SU.

 

Content + member activity = staying power!

You have yourself a small memberbase, that much is clear, well, unless of course those few posts a day are from you.

Now, just encourage posts from your existing members, promote your forum though the various methods listed on Digital Point, and remain active as the admin of the forum.

You need to build SERP so encourage your members to blog about your site, submit to directories.

Hold an article writing contest. Offer up something cheap that your members would enjoy (like special board status?). In the rules, be clear that any & all submitted articles will be used by the site. Diddle each article submitted to include a link to your forums, and then submit them all to article directories. This will give you a handful of unique articles all pointed your way.

Have a referral contest, but make sure all referred members are active so that those referrals will count.

Social bookmarking can help, but not all that much. While you may get 1000 hits from stumble upon, you likely may get no members, and likely no clicks to any ads.

Make sure your site rules are fair, and your moderators are fairer (and active). No one likes too many rules, and no one likes being ruled with an iron fist.

 

look at DP, it is the core users that make the forum roll. Most of the old members with a high post count have an established authority among others. They could say anything and the rest will follow. That is how you build a community. You just have to find and attract the leaders and the rest will follow...

 

The trick there would be to collect the correct leaders. I've been a member on a few smaller forums were the 'core' members were a bunch of jerks, or an inclusive group that kept outsiders (newbies) at bay. That can create a small close knit bunch of members, but that is not much of a community

 

If you could follow what this person said, you would get success. You are looking at about 2 years to see good progress.