Should you even care about people who aren't fans of your niche?

Like say.. a person who doesn't even play games joins a gaming forum and mostly posts in the general discussion area.

Or even a person who doesn't watch/play/read the stuff, that your niche is related to..

My point is.. should you even care about people who are non-gamers or not fans of whatever your niche is?

I originally had my anti-spam question set, to where only people who were full-on gamers or anime fans join, but I had to change it because some people were complaining that the "registeration" was too hard.

I'm not even planning on having my gaming board turn into some kind of "general discussion" schtick.
I mean, I don't mind causal gamers(sans the crowd that thinks Facebook games are great..) or casual anime fans.. but people who aren't even fans of anime or video games.. I dunno..

 

Really, you should care about all your members that join because without them you wouldn't have a community. Everyone plays their part.

 

If they're a member you should care. They're taking time out of their life to hang out at your community for whatever reason. Maybe they have pre-existing friends that hang out there, maybe they just like the atmosphere, etc.

 

Yes you should. Those non-gamer members of yours still provide something to talk about. Sometimes it gets pretty boring if you are talking about the same old stuff over and over again. It helps to have some people just hanging out in the general forum or off-topic forums who provides funny threads to your avid fans. Sometimes, people tend to leave a forum if it feels the same everyday. Everybody needs a change of pace and those non-gamers/non fans of yours provide the change of pace that everyone needs.

 

Have you thought to ask those members why they're joining if they're not interested in the main niche? Maybe they're there for friends? If not, you could always recommend another forum. If you really don't like them only posting in the OT section, then there's no harm in saying so, but there's also no reason to run them off if they're giving you page views, content, and could possibly invite their friends, etc.

 

And plus, word of mouth is very powerful. If they enjoy the community, they'll tell their friends, link to the site, spread it.

 

I don't care about members not interested in my niche, unless they join my forum and help contribute to the community. Those members not interested in my niche, won't help my forum grow so why should I care about them?

 

Right now I am trying to grow my community so I care about anyone joining my forum. Every member is appreciated. I am having a problem with people liking my facebook page but not registering for the forum. Is anyone else having an issue like this?

 

Are you linking to your facebook page anywhere on your forum? Such as the side bar, and/or in your signature? Have you thought about running a contest to get more likes on your Facebook page?

 

I am using social connectors on my forum in the sidebars but I would rather have people register with my forum than just like my facebook page.

 

I care about all my members. One thing I noticed over the years being a part of many sites is that there are times were people just want to talk about something else for a bit. If they are attached to the members of that forum then they will do it there in the off topic section. It might just be about current events, a new product they want to buy or what ever. Having people that are active in the off topic section gives them another person to talk to.

Anything to keep a member on the site longer is good for me.

James

 

Yes and no. I don't have a need in my admin forum for someone who's not interested in forum/blog administration. I don't run a chat community, so I don't really enjoy having them post about movies all day or travels. While EVERYONE is welcome in my community, I do try to target people who are interested in the niche and need support for their forums/blogs or just want to share their experience.

 

And if they really like the community, you will see them open up more to the community itself. Such as. "Confessions", "What are some things you do for fun?" "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" when users have an attachment to the community, the post more, and they ask more questions. They want to feel apart of the place more than anything - even if they're not interested in the niche itself, you can always introduce them to it, and see what they think about it, ya know?

 

The only two reasons someone like this would join are either to spam/ or you've picked the wrong post exchange partner. If it's the former I just use the ban hammer and if it's the latter I just stop the exchange.

 

I run a book forum but the general topic and the RPG are the most active. it's annoying but as long as they contribute something, i am fine.

 

Have you seen spammers that post with such confusing messages? Such as "I like movies, ones my favorite, second is too", wtf are they trying to say? Slick spammers because they'll do it to boast their post count.

But, anyways, as long as you forum has room for various people,, I don't see why it would be a huge issue if they're fans or not.

 

Should you even care about people who aren't fans of your niche?

Let me put it to you this way, I once started a forum in an extremely limited niche (Latin Freestyle). We reached 100,000 post in less than a year. Out of that I would say only 10,000 pertained to the actual niche itself.
We had a very relaxed environment, we allowed everyone to post about anything. As a result of this approach one board closed due to inactivity and the only activity on another board was the occasion tumbleweed rolling by.

I would have loved nothing more to have the "official" site for the niche I was in, but in the end I was more happy at having a site that was active and fun. So yes I cared, I cared because they carried my site through the long periods of non activity many sites in my niche had. I found that the more I did for them, the more they visited, posted and recruited more members. Fast forward; today the second biggest board in the niche is 6 yrs old and doesn't even have 50k in posts. This despite the fact that they have industries folks as members and had just about unlimited access to them. In comparison we only had our members, and in less time we had +250,000 posts. Now post counts isn't everything, but I do believe it is a strong indicator of how active a site is or was.

So basically what I'm saying is that you should care about each and every member even if they are not a die hard Freestyle or Gamer, they still can be a die hard member of your site.

 

If you run a niche forum it may impact the overall quality of posts after some time if there are too many of those members without interest in the niche topic.
Mostly there are two different kind of members, the ones who just want to get informations about playing games or talk about and the other ones who additional or only want to communicate about all other stuff like politic, jokes etc..
It's like a yin and yang thing, you should try to keep it balanced.

 

Agreed!

One of the ways we handle this situation, was to create categories for niche specific topics and general topics and moderated accordingly. We also moved niche related topics to the top and general topics to the bottom, so that those that were there for the niche found it easily. Our front page was 90% about the niche, while 90% of the activity on the site wasn't.

 

I welcome all post but would like to stay on topic as much as possible.