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How to Find Top Contributors on Forums

by anvandarnamn
16 replies
Hi warriors,



I have a list of internet forums using various platforms. How do I search for and find the most active posters on these forums?


I realize that there may not be a universal solution to finding top contributors on any forum. If there is some general approach, great! Otherwise, I will also be happy to search only on the most common forum platforms like vBulletin or phpBB.


For example, how do I find top contributors on Warrior Forum?


As you probably suspected, I want to get thrifty writers to contribute to my site.
#contributors #find #forums #top
  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
    Banned
    What makes you think that the top contributors on WF would be thrifty contributors to your site? Not being a wise ass, but I've contributed a fair amount here and wouldn't be interested in thrifty contributions.
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    • Profile picture of the author anvandarnamn
      Off course you wouldn't when I put it like that and don't tell you the benefits.
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        Originally Posted by anvandarnamn View Post

        Off course you wouldn't when I put it like that and don't tell you the benefits.
        Well, if you put it differently and did tell us the benefits, you'd clearly be "advertising", and this certainly isn't the right part of the forum to try that.

        If you want to employ writers, this is the place to look (though I don't know how thrifty they are): http://www.warriorforum.com/warriors-hire/
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        • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
          Banned
          Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

          Well, if you put it differently and did tell us the benefits, you'd clearly be "advertising", and this certainly isn't the right part of the forum to try that.
          Lexy beat me to it. You aren't allowed to tell us the benefits and request contributors in any of the discussion forums. You can place an Classified, or put it in Wanted - Members Looking To Hire You, or create a WSO, or put it in your signature without referring to it in posts. Anything else would be self promotion and deleted by mods.
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  • Profile picture of the author anvandarnamn
    Understood!

    But Warrior Forum isn't really my target market. I just mentioned it as an example because readers here are presumably more familiar with the functionality of Warrior Forum than other forums.

    I am more interested in contacting top contributors on other forums with a very similar web design. For example, how do I find top contributors on Indian Defence Forum ?

    I would just like to search for all forum members and then sort by number of posts, or something similar.

    Here you have some of Google's top contributors:
    Top Contributors ? Google Top Contributors

    Here you have some of Stack Exchange's top contributors:
    User Reputation Leagues - Stack Overflow - Year 2014 - Stack Exchange

    But those lists are specific to Google and Stack Exchange. I can't find any such lists on Warrior Forum or the India Defence Forum.
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    • Profile picture of the author Frank Donovan
      Originally Posted by anvandarnamn View Post

      I would just like to search for all forum members and then sort by number of posts, or something similar.
      I doubt that would be very effective for your purposes, even if it were possible. It isn't really a numbers game.

      Forums are, essentially, communities. If you want to approach established members of a community, your best chance of success is to first familiarize yourself with the style and culture of the place, and then begin contributing.

      That way, you'll build your reputation while learning which members look the most able to help with your project. They probably won't be the ones with the most posts.

      And if the members you approach already know you, your chances of at least being listened to should be considerably higher than if you were to go in cold.


      Frank
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  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
    Banned
    I don't know how you would sort by number of posts or even get a list of members to sort. Some forums may give you a member list, but how to sort it, I couldn't tell you.
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  • Profile picture of the author laurencewins
    I think you are better to ask in the forums you're interested in. This isn't the ideal place and I doubt that any of the prolific contributors here would be interested in being "thrifty" because each forum is different.
    Signature

    Cheers, Laurence.
    Writer/Editor/Proofreader.

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  • Profile picture of the author WillR
    The most important thing tis to make sure you have an active forum BEFORE asking top contributors to come over and be a part of it. If they arrive at your blog and see very little action, they won't have any interest in being a part of that community.

    On the other hand if you have a thriving community and they can see that, yes, there definitely can be some benefits for them. They can get their name and brand infront of a new group of users.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Pambos
    I personally do not think that sourcing potential content contributors for your website from forums based on post count is effective. This is of course excluding the "Warriors For Hire" section of this forum.

    The best method for you to source content contributors for your website is to visit ALL related (competing) blogs in your niche and scrape all authors, create a spreadsheet and put in all the necessary details of all of these content contributors such as name, website, contact, and social influence (being Twitter reach for example amongst other social media profiles).

    You would use a service such as Klout to determine an authors social influence and reachability in your niche and this will help you determine whether you want that specific author to contribute content or not to your website.

    The end goal is to crowd source content contributors for your blog who have influence and reach in your niche thus resulting in more traffic back to your website when you do publish a new piece of high quality content.

    There is nothing wrong with poaching authors from other websites, this is the nature of business, the majority of these content contributors are freelancers to begin with so they would love nothing more than more paid work.

    Don't be afraid, go ahead and start scraping and approaching these content contributors kindly and seeing if they would be interested in creating content for your website.
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    I talk about business and marketing stuff at SimpleMarketingPlan.com and ramble on about life and random things at ChrisPambos.com

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    • Profile picture of the author WillR
      Originally Posted by Chris Pambos View Post

      I personally do not think that sourcing potential content contributors for your website from forums based on post count is effective.
      It depends what he is trying to achieve. By top contributors I am guessing he is looking for people who will bring some action to his forum by the way of regular posting. Just because someone has a big klout score doesn't mean they will contribute much to your forum... or that they have much value to offer at all.

      If I were trying to get a forum started I would absolutely be looking for people who have high post counts on other forums because it tells me they are very active on forums and that is the exact type of person that is going to help get your own forum kicking along.

      Klout shmout.
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    • Profile picture of the author anvandarnamn
      Technically it's a blog, but it will be marketed as a 'normal' web site. So it's not a forum.

      I agree with your doubts about whether this is the best way to go. I realize that far from all forum addicted posters will be my best contributors. Still, I have to start somewhere, and this is not my only channel. I still think it can be valuable to consider top forum posters. I don't have time to familiarize myself with and build any significant reputation on 5-10 forums, but I do have time to send some private messages.

      Big thanks for all of your advise, and especially to Chris Pambos for explaning a concrete tactic and mentioning Klout, which also lead me to their competitors Kred and PeerIndex ! While it won't list forum posters, it can surely help me find well suited contributors.

      EDIT: Ha! I just realized the irony; that the advice I acknowledged for being especially well written came from the member with the least amount of posts (excluding myself). Maybe I should just look for recent posters rather than top posters. Recent posters are easier to find and are likely to be in a writing mood.
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  • Profile picture of the author Frank Donovan
    Originally Posted by WillR View Post

    If I were trying to get a forum started I would absolutely be looking for people who have high post counts on other forums because it tells me they are very active on forums and that is the exact type of person that is going to help get your own forum kicking along.
    Will, the OP didn't specify his site was a forum. It's more likely to be a blog, IMO, but we'll have to wait until he responds.


    Originally Posted by anvandarnamn View Post

    As you probably suspected, I want to get thrifty writers to contribute to my site.
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  • Profile picture of the author Andy The Copywriter
    Step 1: Read the forum.

    Step 2: Notice which posters have the highest postcount and the most thanks, upvotes, likes, "karma" or whatever other system the site uses to measure reputation.

    Step 3: Contact them.

    At the same time I agree with everyone else in this thread:

    Your idea is ill-advised. You plan seems to be to find "forum celebs" to write content for your site either free or on the cheap. Your concept is essentially "where can I find someone who spends half their day writing up posts on the internet already to write content for my little site that's not even very well known." Do I need to spell out the flaws in this idea?
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  • Profile picture of the author anvandarnamn
    Andy,

    Do you have a better idea?
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