When you run out of ideas for starting up new threads

Has it ever happened to you where your head goes completely blank and you run out of ideas for starting new threads?

An Admin's job is to always keep the forum active with new posts and interesting discussions being created daily to get members to interact but sometimes it can be hard when you have no idea of what to post. Has this ever happened to you when you run out of ideas?

 

It happened with HCNET but I think I was asking for that. It's beyond me to be able to manage new topics for a general forum every single day. Something I learned to the hard way.

 

One word: StumbleUpon.
Best darn new-content-inspiration-generator EVAR

Either that or browser Twitter's trends and look on Google News.

 

When my mind goes blank - I usually check out twitter, or my facebook feed to see what new things I can come up with. If not, I'll also check out top big boards - and see if I can bounce any ideas from those communities.

 

Happens to me... all the time. When this happens, I do something similar to this:

Let's say I ran an anime/manga forum* and the One Piece section was kinda dead. To find new thread ideas for this specific section, I could go read/watch some One Piece, I could Google 'one piece' and get ideas from that, or I could do it the lazy way and doze off for a while and "wait" for ideas to come.

I don't know quite how to describe this process, but that's what I'd do.

*I don't really run an anime/manga forum.

 

I'm always running out of ideas, because my mind is just not always up to posting. That's why I am more of a tech admin, because my mind can usually think of something to add or tweak

 

Well you run a tech forum so it can come in handy for you to think of new things to post but not for everyone else.

I understand what you mean, no bad ideas but in my case I just wait for the ideas to come to me.

 

Not true. StumbleUpon helps you find websites based on your interests and what other people with your interests recommend. So if my selected interests were, say, gardening and outdoors, I would be taken to websites and articles about gardening and outdoors

 

I know about StumbleUpon as well - if you use that idea for ideas, shouldn't Digg be in the same boat?

 

Well I never got into the whole Digg thing. I wasn't interested in it, but if it works for you, use it

 

I haven't used Digg in years.

 

Yeah when I visited the site I really didn't like the look of it; StumbleUpon has always been my favorite.

 

Hey guys let stop discussing bookmarking sites, and get back on topic

 

StumbleUpon all day I have over 19k favorites.

Well Kaiser the thing is sometimes you should let your community roll on its own from time to time. I understand that it is the administrators duty to keep the forum active but the duty doesn't end there. It is also required for you to market and maintain the site. This is why you offer people the position as moderators, as they help with splitting up the duties easier.

 

Yea I agree, that why I have other staff members along with me to help out.. just I do most of everything which is fine as I am suppose to because im the owner.

 

Another good method to help you with ideas is to watch some TV. Why? Sometimes you can come up with questions and such from watching a bit of TV - like a law show, or a talk show. I know I've used to method as well.

 

Because I am not the strongest at writing (something, which whilst I can do it, doesn't come as naturally to me as other things) I find it difficult to consistently come up with interesting and stimulating topics. I find it helps to take a break for a while and not think about my forum, when I do this and come back to my forum I find that ideas are flowing again. I find that I come up with most of my topic ideas in the morning, especially if I have woken up early.

 

I have the TV going while Im online (I go back and forth from watching tv and paying attention to the computer, lol) and lot of topic ideas come from flipping through the channels.

 

Very smart idea I like that

 

Ya, and sometimes I have my music on as well. Music usually puts me in the creative mode - same with watching TV because there's so many ideas for threads with the use of both of them.