| Increasing
Forum Participation
by Joe Tracy
How many times have you come across a forum in which the
most recent post was 2-3 months old? It happens often on
the Web because many Webmasters open forums too soon or don't
understand the methods needed to properly promote forum participation.
The right mix of techniques can make a world of difference
in turning one post a year into 40 posts a day. Here are
some techniques to increase participation in your forum:
1) Entice people with front-page quotes. When I opened
my first forum in the 1990's, one of the things I had to
deal with was getting people to participate. Since the home
page of the Website I was running was receiving
the most traffic, I set up a forum quote of the day that
appeared prominently on the front page. Every day I featured
a different forum post, most which were controversial or
inquisitive in nature to entice others to add their opinions.
By far,
this marketing method brought the best results.
2) Establish contests. When I first opened my forum,
I offered free t-shirts to the first five
people to reach 50 legitimate posts. It
proved to be a great competition. Later I started giving
away a free t-shirt every month in a random drawing
among
those
who regularly
post. Of course the t-shirts were branded with my Website
logo and URL.
3) Use your ezine for promotion. If you have an email
newsletter (ezine), use it to promote your forum. For example,
when I held the contest to give the first five people to
reach 50 posts a free t-shirt, I kept a running tally of
who was closest to the goal and published it, along with
the monthly contest winners, in my newsletter.
4) Start small then grow. Keep your forum categories
small (i.e. 2-3 categories) when first starting a forum.
That way all the posts are concentrated in a small area,
making it look like you have a lot of participants. As your
forum grows, you can expand the categories. This is vital.
Your forum will look bare if you have 8 categories with only
a scattering of posts. Start with only 2-3 categories.
5) Don't force people to register. Some people don't
like to register in order to post. Therefore consider eliminating
registration (if this is feasible for your forum) or create
a couple of "open categories."
6) Link from articles. If you have regular news or
articles on your site, add a feedback button (which says "What
do you think?") that links to your forum so that people can
post their opinion.
7) Be active! By being active in your own forum,
you are helping to promote the discussions. People will also
respect that you are involved in your own community.
8) Recruit moderators. Recruit some charismatic friends
or visitors to become moderators. They will help keep the
discussions lively and flowing.
9) Make banners for your site. Make some banners
that promote your forum then spread those banners throughout
your Website.
10) Submit to Search Engines. Be sure to submit each
of your active topics to the Search Engines (add Meta Tag
headers for maximum results on select Search Engines).
The above ideas are only effective for those who visit your
Website. Therefore it is important to market your entire
Website in order to increase traffic so that many new people
will have the opportunity to participate in your forums.
Learn to market your entire site with focused ebooks like
"55
Vital Web Marketing Strategies for Marketing Your Website."
Need a forum? The most popular forum that you can license
is vBulletin..
Perhaps you are looking for something of high quality, but
a little
cheaper
- like
free.
No problem.
Check out phpbb.
--
Joe Tracy is editor of Webmaster
Techniques Magazine and author of "55
Vital Web Marketing Strategies for Marketing Your Website."
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