Tips to get your forum bigger!

We have a forum that we recently added to our website, it is very hard to get it going and get people to sing up and post. Never run forum before so did not realize how much work it involves to manage it.

Anyway we now started actively promote it a we started a posting contest about 2 weeks ago, haven't had much response to it yet, maybe the prize money is too low.

So we still learning and experimenting what to do with it so can not give any advice to anybody.

I agree with the point about having less boards, one guy a couple of months ago asked for feedback on his boards and the first thing I noticed was 200+ subforums!

Start small with 10 subforums as your absolute maximum limit and expand as demand is created.

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Have a clear vision, if it is about computer games focus on ONE game, or if you must one publisher...don't try to take the entire pc games market. Scale it up when you find people requesting constantly for stuff and only if the support and demand is there.

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Having pretty forums is one thing, having one that actually works is another so take the plunge, get a good first forum program and invest in it, people will respond much better if you have IPB rather than if you have something that was cobbled together in 10 minutes. This will also give added confidence that you are serious and don't intend it to bury it in two weeks.

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Make a lot of threads at first but make them about what people actually would want and would actually create themselves, your suggestion reminds me of a crazed poster bot that spat out something like 700 posts and news feeds a day for a small forum of only 200 people. Something like every other minute you would find another post from another news site that was basically the same information...this is not good and simply scoffs bandwidth. If you do not have the population to support it do not build New York City.

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Have VIP members or senior/distinguished members but don't create the rank just for the hell of it otherwise you will have problems down the line when people expect it...make people have to work for it and also make it known that it is entirely based on merit, not spam post count.

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Making contests is good but don't do something so often as to make people bored with the whole idea, once every Christmas is what my forum does and with that they get a special user tag for a while and the winning team gets access to a closed off forum...it usually involves following the clues to the password identity and that is good if you have 200 people on each team trying to beat the other.

A special tag you could have is "Winner 2010" and so on for all the years later to be used as and when they wish, that way they can show how long they have been there and contributed...people like special user designations that are discontinued and have exclusivity.

Sparhawke ~ Former Admin of a fan site with 140k view per day.

Nice tips...

Create a forum that can only be viewed after 10-20 posts. Give something useful in there, good info, great tips, free download, free templates or whatever, something worthwhile. Advertise the fact right at the top of the forum. Be upfront, it's just the normal you give, we take, everyone gets something. Be clear that you will moderate the access to it and won't grant access to twenty posts of "thanks" and "nice post". Keep checking, don't make them wait days for access after their twentieth post.

Activity is the only thing that stops a forum growing, it's catch twenty two. You have to give them a reason to want to talk about something in an empty room. Answer every post and answer quickly, don't worry if you're talking to yourself at first, create threads on what people want to know, talk, or debate about. Try to get a few friend to help. The free offer will make you new friends if it's something good enough. Don't stop until the members are talking to each other. Don't pay for forum posts, you will get nothing but absolute junk which will kill all your hard work. Forums are hard as hell but beat any list if you can get enough regular members. Bear in mind that only a small percentage of visitors will actually post anything. Giving good information will make sure they come back as well, don't underestimate the worth of non posters.

Forums require a lot of work. You need to closely monitor it as it is one venue that's most susceptible to spamming. If you do not watch it closely, you're boards will surely go down with spam. I have an SEO forum and I check it daily for new posts and regulate members, as well as ban spammers on a 'very' regular basis. :p

I've been one of the folks in the forums and have been disappointed when there are only a few people actively involved. I think forums can be tremendous places of learning and sharing, but not enough take advantage, unfortunately.

What would make my forum bigger ? a free forum script or should I buy Vbulletin ?

Forums are my thing, if there's anything that is. So I think I'll offer what I've learnt.

Management is key. And so is visiblity. Make sure your website promotes your forum, if it's for a website, so people get in there to post. And greet your new members and offer to help if they need anything. Make them feel welcome so they will want to return. If you're offering a product maybe offer some perks to people if they join your board and post a bit. A lot like this site does. And finally, don't be ban happy on your members and ban for tiny things. I've had that happen to me when all I did on the board was ask some question that they considered off topic {even though it was about one of their products}. Needless to say, I didn't buy from them.

most webmasters struggling to expose their forums, hope your tips will help them.

Thanks for sharing nice tips for maintaining forums.