Sunday, September 12, 2010

10 Tips for a new Forum Owner

Before social net works got all famous and peo ple started express ing them selves in less than 140 char ac ters using Twit ter, where did peo ple net work and discuss?

What hap pened when you had a ques tion you wanted to ask, it didn’t go as a LinkedIn ques tion or Face book sta tus mes sage, peo ple logged on to a mes sage board or forums and got their prob lems solved by experts or other peo ple that have pre vi ously expe ri enced the same issue.


The big ques tion that gets effort lessly thrown around, is that are forums still rel e­vant? Yes they are, one can’t get a .htac cess prob lem resolved in 140 char ac ters and you surely can’t dis cuss about spare parts for your old truck. This is where forums come to the res cue, these vibrant com mu ni ties con sist of expe ri enced mem bers who make new com ers feel wel come and guide them around the forum.

If you have a new forum or plan ning to start a new forum you should con sider the fol­low ing 10 Tips that will give you a bet ter chance of mak ing it big:


1. Run a refer ral con test and let blog gers in your niche know about your forum. Refer ral con tests are a great way to get blog gers talk ing about your forum because they stand to get paid if they win the con test. (Make sure you keep mul ti ple prizes)

2. Buy ban ner adver tise ments from blogs and forums in your niche. Adwords is not a bad choice either if you have a decent bud get. You should use both these meth ods if your in for branding.

3. Intro duc tion, use intro duc tion forum to pro mote other inter est ing threads on the forum. New com ers should get a warm wel come on your forum.

4. Con tests, more con tests: Run more con tests and reward mem bers for sim ple things such as; high est poster of the week/month, most con tribut ing mem ber, thread of the month (thread with max i mum views / replies) and etc.

5. Start new threads on your own. Most forum mem bers are mostly inter ested in post ing responses to threads they like, you and your mod er a tors have to cre ate new inter est ing threads to keep your mem bers engaged. Give them some thing to post a few every time they visit your forum. Fol low lat est trends in your niche and cre ate top ics around them.

6. Use polls so that your mem bers get to know more about each other. This will give fuel to your forum’s engines and your mem bers will know what kind of threads are liked in forum.

7. For cer tain niches, it might make sense to share Adsense rev enues with forum members.

8. Usual meth ods like post ing excel lent con tent on other forums and blogs to draw vis i tors tend to have mixed results.

9. Keep a tab on spam posts, every one gets turned off when they see num ber of irrel e vant threads on a forum. You want to retain your vis i tors once they have signed up.

10. Award your mem bers by allow ing them to have a DoFol low sig na ture and lat est blog entry. This can be a dou ble edged sword and might get some SPAM on your forum, but it’s worth a try.

By imple ment ing these sim ple meth ods on your forum, you will be on your way to cre­ate a suc cess ful forum.

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