Any tips to create a successful forum?

[ladan]

You know how some forums have hundreds of active members and an exciting, growing community... while some others hardly have any regular posting members.

Well, I'm going to start a forum for my membership website and I know many of you guys actively participate in forums, so you know some important factors that makes or breaks a forum's success.

So can you share a few tips and suggestions on how to make a forum successful and active?

What factors should a forum have to make YOU like to hang out and participate in it frequently?

Any tips you can give to help me create a successful, fun, and active forum is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Ladan

[jumpenjuhosaphat]

Remain active in your own forum. If you aren't active, then it's hard to expect your members to remain active.

Don't post articles too often, especially the ones that require your members to follow a link. The best posts are posts that give your members the opportunity to use their knowledge. In other words, ask questions, simple ones and tough ones, and ask lots of them.

Be patient, depending on the type of forum you are starting, it can take several months, or even a year or more to gain enough momentum to be considered a budding community.

View your forum as a community in which you take part. Don't try to view it as your domain that you must control and have ultimate power over. A spirit of community begins with you, and is in my opinion the one thing that sets good forums apart from bad ones. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of forums far busier that have a terrible sense of community, but with a sense of community you increase your chances of a successful forum.

[TimeIsMoney]

If you are going into entertainment like me, I had good success promoting it with a good traffic provider ( the one in my sig ).

[Baker]

Make sure the core of your members know alot about the topic and make very information and unique posts yourself. The best thing is to get the members to be friends and give it that "community" feel. I would really work on making great content and running a contest to get the members into it. I like forums that let have a wide variety of subjects if it isn't niche and ACTIVITY if the forum is dead the members will leave.

[hhheng]

First I think youself shall be active in the forum and answer almost all the questions, and participate with the memebers.

Second, you shall not let the memebers feel like they are prohibitted to do these and that. For example, there are many webmaster forums like digitalpoint, v7n, webproworld, etc. But for some like highrankings, wickedfire, webmasterworld, etc, they don't allow active link in the post. Most annoying thing is that your posts have to wait a moderator review and the moderator will decide the posts to show up or not. I feel no happy with these forums, and never went back after a few times.

Third, just a single case. Sometimes I will get some visitors from an unkonw forums, and then I will go there and register, reply some posts.

[ladan]

Thank you for sharing your tips. I found them very helpful.

[ladan]

Originally Posted by jumpenjuhosaphat

Remain active in your own forum. If you aren't active, then it's hard to expect your members to remain active.

I agree. That's one of the factors that makes me personally like to participate in a forum.

Don't post articles too often, especially the ones that require your members to follow a link. The best posts are posts that give your members the opportunity to use their knowledge. In other words, ask questions, simple ones and tough ones, and ask lots of them.

View your forum as a community in which you take part. Don't try to view it as your domain that you must control and have ultimate power over. A spirit of community begins with you, and is in my opinion the one thing that sets good forums apart from bad ones. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of forums far busier that have a terrible sense of community, but with a sense of community you increase your chances of a successful forum.

Yes, forums are so popular because they are a "community" where people can interact with each other, so everything that give a more "community" feeling to a forum will make it a more inviting place to hang out at.

Thank you.

[bobchrist]

Also your members should feel as integrated into the community as possible so you need to organize a monthly forum 'award ceremony, contest and thread for the month, best reply reward etc to motivate them for coming back and contribute in your forum regularly.

[Tariel Zivzivadze]

my forum is in my signature ...

I can say that the Georgian internet is very small ... 50-60 thousand visitors a day ...

I managed to develop a forum by integrating marketing approach with event organizing. I was organizing the web conferences on specific topics to attract the visitors ...

Truly saying - it's a big headache to develop the forum to the poiint from which it develops dynamically

[sheena]

I suggest that you should know your target audience, research on what topics usually user go or they want to participate, be friendly, implementing of not so strict guidelines and procedures, be able to have a signature, can post their articles or promotions. A forum that should build community and
must be entertaining.

Originally Posted by ladan

You know how some forums have hundreds of active members and an exciting, growing community... while some others hardly have any regular posting members.

Well, I'm going to start a forum for my membership website and I know many of you guys actively participate in forums, so you know some important factors that makes or breaks a forum's success.

So can you share a few tips and suggestions on how to make a forum successful and active?

What factors should a forum have to make YOU like to hang out and participate in it frequently?

Any tips you can give to help me create a successful, fun, and active forum is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Ladan

[lifeofegypt]

I too am starting a forum on one of my sites. The input by some of you is very useful and i appreeciate the info. This is one of the best marketing forums on the internet.