Forum growth?

[Hwilliams]

Hi,

How in the world do you get a forum from 5 members to say 50 members or more? Forums don't generate a revenue for you (at least mine doesn't) so spending money on advertising is just dead money is'nt it? Help!!! Does anyone have any ideas. How did UKBF (for example) grow into such a healthy community? Where do you start?

fresholi.co.uk

[fastfences]

Hi HW.
Word of mouth and good search positioning are the most productive ways of engaging patrons to forums. I, as many others, found this one on Google, but after that it's up to us, as members to ensure the forum's success. I think the participation and variety of posts are the key success to any forum. Some may say that 'gentle' moderation also contributes to the growth.

I have joined other forums in their infancy, contributed greatly by initiating many posts, but was nearly answering my own posts due to the lack of members. I can't provide a definitive answer, but I feel the successful forums have quite a few 'core' members who are able to keep the forum 'ticking over' and thereby always have something fresh fopr the visitor to see. If the visitor is impressed they'll join and the cycle continues.
Cheers, Nigel

[jaypeh]

Totally agree with fast there that the members make any forum,

just had a look at fresholi there, and not sure if this is the site in question ie the members lounge, nice use of colors but it doesnt really look like a forum ?

Let me know if its a different site ? (& Ill shut up) :-)

Anyway how is your listing for keywords on google etc?

have you used overture to see how people are searching?

how many hits you getting via search engines?

Do you have stats available?, if so then you just need to sit down with them and a calc and do some calculations to see if you are indeed getting enough traffic, if so why arent potential members signing and chatting.

I would probably imagine your just not getting the traffic? if so you need to spend a bit of time on seo but dont pay anyone to do it.

let me know a few more specifics and I'll hopefully give you a few ideas

[Hwilliams]

Thanks both of you. The forum (yes it is fresholi) is very new and I do keep posting there (although much of the time I feel like I'm talking to myself :redface: ). I also think I should change the home page to be more exact and include the word 'Forum' (Hubby's doing that now for me!).

I have just looked up googles keywords list for fresholi and there seems to a few and there are others listed that seem just right for me which I could add. Excuse my ignorance here (I'm a novice - obviously) but where it says 'Add', do I have to pay for those words added? :|

[jaypeh]

not following about the add part?

but I would reccommend making forum the main part of the page!

certainly above the water mark ie its a long page and your dets on the forum are below where most peoples browser can see.

Sure they can scroll but peeps is lazy bones !

get some meta tags in your source code,

get some reciprical links going, but be carefull who you choose.

and you obviously have either a business interest in beauty or just like that area?

So get some people advertising on your site nothing big to start maybe a local contact , or maybe sell space for a link on there site, but again be carefull who you choose! and again potential advertisers will want high stats, .

I guess the idea is to make a community so get around all forums in beauty, see whats going on!

It will end up running itself but its like a snowball !

well more like a heavy rock till it builds up momentum.

Obviously if you do manage to sell a bit of space I am available to design, but hope some of this helps

[jaypeh]

oh yeah and give the spider robots some food,




get your link in every post, set up a signature with hyperlink

move on up that ladder

[Hwilliams]

Thats excellent stuff! Double thanks!!! Will sort out the signature & get around other forums (although some are really funny about URLs - understandable I suppose) & I've sent about a gazillion emails to members of various professional organisations & colleges - me thinks that they thinks it's spam (just a guess).

Will get to work on the meta tags (not sure what these are - but I know a man who thankfully does) and feeding the spiders! No worries about the 'Add' thing, sorted so ignore my stupidity :redface:

Jaypeh
question ie the members lounge, nice use of colors but it doesnt really look like a forum

What makes you think it doesn't? Just out of interest....

http://www.fresholi.co.uk

[jaypeh]

"What makes you think it doesn't? Just out of interest"....

as mentioned the first mention of members lounge is too far down, and the details about it are below most peeps taskbar unless they scroll!

would reccommend heading and link to it on main nav bar.....

maybe move login to home page ?

and thats about it really unless I start billing you :D

Anyways good luck with it all and if you get stuck with anything web related by all means pm me

jase

[Cornish Steve]

Not to worry you, but my guess is that it's harder to get from 50 to 500 than from 5 to 50.

[Hwilliams]

Hey, 10 will do for now!!! :)

Thanks Jaypeh, really useful stuff! Please no bills... I'll stop quizzing now :redface:

[dan_moore]

The best way to get a forum started is to convince(!) four or five friends to each go onto the site and make a couple of posts a day, and do a few yourself too.

Do that for a couple of months and try to work on getting good search engine traffic at the same time. This is the best 'free' way to kick start a forum, as when new people come along they will only bother participating in general if they that the forum is posted to at least daily.

When it hits a certain level of a couple of new sign ups each day, you should be able to then take more of a back seat.

Then the 'fun' starts of fighting all the spam posts at which point you consider abandoning the forum as you spend half your life deleting useless posts ;)

Good luck!

Dan

[Wanda]

Hey there,

I really envy you guys in what your doing! I'd love to be able to have a forum going, its pretty cool. So if anyone would like to give me some advice of where to begin , it would have to be step by step instructions.

You'd be dealing with a real newbie! LOL

cheers,
Wanda

[andysv1k]

Im just going through all this for the second time now.

That first period where you are posting to yourself could destroy the forum if you are not pro-active enough to get people on-board.

I dedicated one weekend to really spend time on getting new members and i got it from around 10 or so to over 120 members in just that weekend. That really kickstarted things to the point now where i rarely post in non admin topics. I made the mistake of sitting back and hoping it would self grow from that point. it has, but nowhere near as fast as i would like. Im at around 250 members, but with quite a high post rate, but thats been atleast a year to get there.

Ive now decided to do something about it, ive redone the logo, moved to a faster server and recruited a couple of mods to help. we are now building a plan to really hit the member count hard. In the next couple of weeks we will attack it together (about 5 of us in total) and see what happens.

Wanda, if you want a forum, go for it! but just be aware it takes a lot of your time. My new forum is only at around 5 members and has only been open a week, but im building a plan to push that as its a forum i really want to suceed
(click on my sig link to join! :rolleyes: )

If you need any help Wanda PM me your questions.

Andy.

[Ozzy]

UKBF is over 3 years old now, and it is hard going to get the forum busy, and it is down to the numbers of members. Once you reach into the thousands of members the forum picks up its own momentum and keeps going. However at that point you needs lots of moderators to keep on top of squabbles and spamming.

In the earlier days I did use paid advertising such as pay-per-click on Google, Overture, Espotting and the likes. Now I still do some magazine advertising and send out postcard flyers to new businesses that are setup, and hand them out at networking events. I probably spend a few hundred quid a month on advertising, and it is starting to pay off as we have some paying advertisers on here now! Mind you, the forums still owe me around £8,000 :( !

You need a plan for your forums, why are you starting a forum? What do you want out of it? What do you want to offer from your forum? Then work on promotional activity based around the answers to those questions.
If you just want to run a forum because you think it would be "cool" then you wont put the right amount of effort into getting it going.

[fastfences]

However at that point you needs lots of moderators to keep on top of squabbles . . .


Squabbles? On UKBF? You've got to be joking!!
Cheers, Nigel

[emilymay]

Why not try and get real people, making a living out of skincare to join and stay with your forum

[directmarketingadvice]

Why not try and get real people, making a living out of skincare to join and stay with your forum

Because he was asking the question 2 years ago?

Steve

[OldWelshGuy]

Because he was asking the question 2 years ago?

Steve

Then after 2 years of nose to the grindstone, his skin will need moisturising :D

[DanMartin]

How did UKBF (for example) grow into such a healthy community?

Quick Thinking: The story of UK Business Forums (http://www.businesszone.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=170401&d=1095&h=1097&f=1096&dateformat=%o-%B-%Y) may interest you.

[DanMartin]

Then after 2 years of nose to the grindstone, his skin will need moisturising :D

Whoops! :)

[mattjones]

Instead of spending on advertising, spend on an incentive. Say, iTunes or Waterstone's vouchers.

For every blog post they include you - 10pts
Every new member - 5pts
Every post that new member makes - 1pt

Person with the most points gets the voucher (after a certain amount of days) and the rest go into a draw for say £5.

Encourages the best way of recommending people - word of mouth, at relatively little cost.