Do You Host Contests Or Challenges On Your Forum?

[snakeair]

Do you host any contests or challenges on your forum?

What type of prize's do you give away to the winners?

If you just started a new forum and finding it hard to find some everyday posters, don't you think running a referal contest or some sort of contest would get you some sign ups?

I've noticed some new forum owners buying paid posters and after me looking at there forum, it sure looked like a bunch of robots who was posting off topic content or spam in the forum section's. Don't hire a paid poster at all. You'd spend more time fixing there posts or removing them.

If you plan on creating a huge forum, do things the old fashioned way.... earn the sign ups by luring them in with some prize's.

I did this when i had started a forum. Ran a referal contest for the first few months with fantastic free banner advertising to the winners and a sticky thread for a month. I had no extra cash at the time and couldn't find any sponsors to give out cash prize's.

If your forum is sorta dead or you want to get the viral marketing going, start a challenge or a contest. You need to be prepared for cheaters in the contest. You know people creating multiple accounts...etc.

Anyone have any success by running some sort of contest each month or every few months? (Remember, if you create a contest, you can't give your friends special treatment)

You as the admin can't just sit behind the monitor and not try to find new ways to get new signups and loyal member's besides getting people to join in on the current discussions.

[Dreamrage]

Back on my other forum, we generally have contests every few months. These are point based because the forum works on am activity points system. It ties in with every aspect of the forum, and what we do is generally run a competition where whoever gets to 1000 activity points within a given month wins a cash prize. It works well because it brings in new members, and it has a few problems, because mods need to be on their toes because a few will try mess with the system. All in all though, when the competitions are launched, members are excited, they tell their friends, and you have a gold rush headed towards your forum. As long as you take the necessary precautions and have a good mod setup, it works in your favor really well. (and infractions given subtract from activity points so it helps in some way to keep things going smoothly).

[snakeair]

That's a very good type of contest to run. It will spark new life into the forum and get the current members telling there friends and subsribers about the forum.

You are right about having a good moderating setup. I like the idea about infractions hurt yourself when in the contest. Hopefully it'll get people to act in a professional way on the forum. (knocks on wood)

[traxport121]

How to actually advertise your contest ?

[snakeair]

Originally Posted by traxport121

How to actually advertise your contest ?

If you have active forum members or even inactive forum members, send a MASS EMAIL to all members telling them about the contest and also link them to the contest rules since you should create them. If you don't create contest rules, people will cheat by creating multiple accounts and other crap.

In that mass email tell your members to tell there own friends, put the word out on all social networking sites that they belong to. The word of mouth will kick in if the contest is a good one or the prize's are really cool.

Promote the contest the same way you promote your forum.