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How to build an engaging forum?

by wellspear
9 replies
Hi!

I'm thinking about ways to implement a forum to a Ecology-oriented news website, to make it engaging for the visitors to participate in making posts and/or engaging in activities on the site.

I'm looking for good examples where others have succeeded in this area. It could be anything from a single feature which makes it interesting and fun for visitors to engage in, to a beautifully incorporated forum into the website structure. Anything that would give visitors value for their engagement.

Thanks!
#build #engaging #forum
  • Profile picture of the author travlinguy
    The smart way to launch a forum is to first build a community around your topic of interest. You do that by hosting a blog that's loaded with excellent content and continuing to add relevant content often. Of course, you'll also want to offer a newsletter and perhaps an incentive for people to sign up for it.

    Once this endeavor morphs into a loyal community you can roll out the forum. It's tough going just opening a forum without first having interested people. It can be done but building a group of followers first makes things far easier. Good luck.
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    • Profile picture of the author wellspear
      Originally Posted by travlinguy View Post

      The smart way to launch a forum is to first build a community around your topic of interest. You do that by hosting a blog that's loaded with excellent content and continuing to add relevant content often. Of course, you'll also want to offer a newsletter and perhaps an incentive for people to sign up for it.

      Once this endeavor morphs into a loyal community you can roll out the forum. It's tough going just opening a forum without first having interested people. I can be done but building a group of followers first makes things far easier. Good luck.
      Interesting point. A group of followers could possibly be the 10 000+ returning monthly visitors? There must be a way to attract at least 10% of these to engage into some forum activity. Any specific idea, or example on a webpage that has succeeded in this?
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      • Profile picture of the author travlinguy
        Originally Posted by wellspear View Post

        Any specific idea, or example on a webpage that has succeeded in this?
        Not offhand but it shouldn't be hard to find many. Do searches for popular topics. Golf comes to mind. Dancing. Stocks and investment. Forex trading. Health. Many of the authority sites you'll find started small. Eventually a forum just made sense.

        In most cases you'll find just what I've described. Such sites are often run by people with a passion, folks that would be likely to be blogging on a topic even for a very small audience. You'll see a lot of people say you don't need to have passion for what you're doing. I don't agree. Visitors sense your passion, your devotion. Put that together with your willingness to offer lots of relevant content and you're community will grow and prosper. Build it and they will come.

        I suspect you've got some level of passion about what you're doing or want to do. Write about it. Create videos about it. Go to Youtube and get videos to post. Contact those video creators and ask them to guest blog on your site. Ask other people in the field to write stuff for you and you reciprocate. Create special reports and offer them. Put links in them that point back to the mother ship. There are many things you can do. Each of them shows yet another level of dedication. It would be hard to not get desirable results if you go at it right.

        Just continue to build a valuable online resource. You'll have a successful forum up before you know it. You'll also learn a lot about marketing and people in the process. And if you offer lots of great content and treat people with respect they'll trip over each other to buy your stuff, whatever it may be, because they know you're the real deal.
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  • Profile picture of the author J50
    I once watched a brand new forum grow from nothing to have 20,000+ registered members. How they did it was they created a piece of highly valuable software and just gave it away. All you need to do of course was register to the forum. Along with his own marketing efforts, it soon went viral.

    You could run some kind of competition, and give away something of high value? To enter a person must do some tasks like, open a thread and make 5 posts or whatever. Create some TOS about thread and post quality and it might just be enough to get it to start snow balling.
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    • Profile picture of the author wellspear
      Originally Posted by J50 View Post

      I once watched a brand new forum grow from nothing to have 20,000+ registered members. How they did it was they created a piece of highly valuable software and just gave it away. All you need to do of course was register to the forum. Along with his own marketing efforts, it soon went viral.

      You could run some kind of competition, and give away something of high value? To enter a person must do some tasks like, open a thread and make 5 posts or whatever. Create some TOS about thread and post quality and it might just be enough to get it to start snow balling.
      Sounds good. I'm interested in keeping these members though, so that they keep writing posts after those "required" ones. Any ideas?
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      • Profile picture of the author J50
        Originally Posted by wellspear View Post

        Sounds good. I'm interested in keeping these members though, so that they keep writing posts after those "required" ones. Any ideas?
        Once there's activity, they will most likely stick. The reason most people never join a forum, or post etc is because there is no activity. It's the whole chicken and the egg complex. If you can do something to go from nothing to something, you've already achieved the hardest part in creating an active forum.
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        • Profile picture of the author wellspear
          Originally Posted by J50 View Post

          Once there's activity, they will most likely stick. The reason most people never join a forum, or post etc is because there is no activity. It's the whole chicken and the egg complex. If you can do something to go from nothing to something, you've already achieved the hardest part in creating an active forum.
          That's true. How would you recommend to market the forum, exactly? The website is as mentioned a Ecology-based news-site.
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          • Profile picture of the author J50
            Originally Posted by wellspear View Post

            That's true. How would you recommend to market the forum, exactly? The website is as mentioned a Ecology-based news-site.
            Do you currently have any kind of existing audience, such as a website, blog or list etc? If you do not, then I'd look to how I can connect with those kind of people as cheaply as possible. The easiest way would be to start vloging on YouTube, that is of course if you don't mind being infront of the camera.

            Let people know about your forum, and competition etc and add a link in the description. You can also start talking to people on Twitter etc...
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  • Profile picture of the author RockNRolla
    Originally Posted by wellspear View Post

    Hi!

    I'm thinking about ways to implement a forum to a Ecology-oriented news website, to make it engaging for the visitors to participate in making posts and/or engaging in activities on the site.

    I'm looking for good examples where others have succeeded in this area. It could be anything from a single feature which makes it interesting and fun for visitors to engage in, to a beautifully incorporated forum into the website structure. Anything that would give visitors value for their engagement.

    Thanks!
    I think the best way to launch a forum is to already have some sort of audience or community that you can attract to it. I just started a blog with a forum from the word go and know it's going to take a bit of work to get it off the ground. I would've maybe been better waiting a couple of months before launching it.
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