Gather a critical mass of members in a forum
In order to design a successful forum, there are three key questions an administrator should ask before creating the forum.
- Goal 1. How will you assemble a critical mass of members
- Goal #2. What will compel members to provide content
- Goal #3. How will the forum survive the first year?
In this article we cover objective #1: how to gather a critical mass of members.
be niche
Your forum has to build a name for itself as the authority on a subject. All successful forums have something that sets them apart from the rest. For example, it could be the unique content of the site, an underserved demographic niche that they are targeting, or the personality of the site administrator.
If you’re building a forum, ask yourself, “What will people get from my forum that they can’t get anywhere else?”
All successful forums have a purpose. They exist for a specific reason, to achieve something. To connect people with common interests, or to facilitate conversation on topics related to the site.
One of the main reasons many new forums fail is because there are too many forums on the same topic! Forums will not be successful if their sole purpose is to generate traffic for the main website.
Choice of forum software
Getting this right is essential. There is a high probability that existing forum posts will be lost when switching to other software later.
Consider search engine optimization first. Since over 85% of new traffic to your website will come from search engines, it is essential that search engines find your discussion forum posts.
Before choosing a discussion forum software package, make sure that all posts within the forum can be found and ranked by search engines. Most discussion forum programs hide message posts in such a way that search engines simply cannot crawl them.
One way to find out if message postings within a specific forum software package are optimized for search engines is to visit a site that uses that software, copy a recent forum title and paste it into Google and do a search (circle the search title with quotes so that Google knows exactly what to search for).
If the title of the message appears within the first 50 pages found by Google, you know that the forum has been optimally indexed. If the title doesn’t appear, you may want to look at a different forum software package.
Most of the major forum scripts are SEO oriented, but there are ways to further improve your results by adding search engine friendly URLs or, in the case of vBulletin, adding vBSEO (a complete set of SEO enhancements).
Dynamic URLs, Session IDs, etc. used by most forum software can be very detrimental to the health of the forum from a search engine point of view.
Be careful when choosing the type of forum and the forum script or software to be used. The forum should be easy to find and easy to use. Some forum software and scripts come with mandatory ads posted by the parent company and lead to poor user experience.
Focus content and discussion
Users will register and post to your forum if they find the existing content interesting and worth participating in. Establish several interesting categories within your forum, without going overboard.
When you start the site, you won’t have many members, so keep the content focused on a few discussions just to avoid empty rooms. It is much better to have 4 active sections than 15 empty ones.
Don’t be afraid to group similar topics together. Once a forum grows to a size where threads are posted to page 2 and 3, consider splitting the forum into two smaller ones.
Don’t have too many off-topic areas of discussion. Instead, create one or two introductory discussions, where new users can post about themselves and existing users can welcome them.
Note that before you make the forum public, it’s a good idea to create maybe two or three threads in each area of the forum, so visitors have a place to post. Many new forum users are too shy to post new threads on their own.
function over form
Users care more about content and community than design. Sites with a lot of images have a good first impression, but poor usability afterwards. Image-rich sites take longer to read threads, make a new post, move between forums, etc. If page refresh is slow, users post less and are less willing to return. Google and Yahoo are not particularly attractive, but they are very successful search engines that observed the law of efficient page refresh.
Design should not be the focus, but enhance the user experience with clear, easy-to-use navigation, few fancy buttons and images, and making sure everyone understands the site’s features. There is no substitute for good form design, consistent branding, clear and legible typeface, and ample white space.
Use hacks, plugins and features sparingly
Many forum scripts have hundreds of plugins available for free, for example vBulletin, including social media, live chat, shop and game room plugins.
The trick here is to use fewer features, but do it well. Avoid making the mistake of adding so many features that it becomes a visual barrier for new users or slows down posts from existing users. Add too many features too quickly, and you won’t give yourself enough time to measure them or allow your users to adopt them.
All that is required is a simple and clean design with features that promote registration, referencing and publishing.
super easy registration
Almost all forums have some barrier to entry, to rule out trolling and spam. However, a common mistake among forum administrators is making registration complex.
For example, some forums ask you to agree to the rules, answer security questions, validate your identity via email, and wait for moderator approval. While these measures do counter spam, if your registration process is long and tedious, many users will give up. Try to strike a good balance between security and ease of use.
In addition to making it easy to sign up, offer registrants some sort of benefit to joining in addition to permission to post. These could be freebies or downloads.
Set your barriers to entry to be big or small. Big will give you fewer members, but quality; small will win you more users but mixed quality.
Member Referral Schemes
Many forums fail for lack of publicity. Tell your friends to join, and if they find it interesting, they’ll tell their friends, who in turn will tell their friends, etc. This can fit nicely with a referral scheme, whereby users are rewarded for referring other users to the forum. Word of mouth advertising, along with other forms of advertising, eg SEO optimization, Google Ads, link exchange with other forums, can result in a powerful combination that will attract more and more users to your forums.
Seed links in other forums
Let people know about your forum/site for free, simply by joining other forums and having your link in their forum/profile signature. Sending email solicitations to sites can attract negative publicity, as recipients may perceive you as a desperate spammer.
The best technique is to join another forum. Have a link to your site in your signature and try to make about 10 posts each week. If you get a great reputation on the forum, people will review your link. If you are credible, chances are people from those forums will join yours.
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