Could a more specific admin forum be better than a general one?

As in, instead of a more general forum covering all forum admins, you'd have a slightly more specific forum that caters to say, admins of gaming forums or sports forums or car forums or whatever else. The focus would then be on forum, blog, wiki and other site admins based around that niche rather than on a certain type of software script.

I think this could actually work much better to be honest. I mean, look at some of the services promotion sites like Forum Promotion offer, and you realise that they're often kind of useless. Why? Because most people on said sites don't know enough about a site's topic to meaningfully contribute to it, so any attempts at post exchanges end up mostly either be vague fluff posts which don't add much to either site or the other admin constantly posting in the off topic section. And things like affiliate swaps are kind of useless on these sites, because getting links from completely irrelevant websites is practically useless for both promotion and SEO. I think a forum based purely on administration in a certain niche could probably fix these sorts of issues.

Additionally, each niche often has its only issues that forum/website admins in the field have to deal with. I can't name any off the top of my head, but there are enough differences that general 'forum' or 'blog' advice often isn't that useful.

And finally, such a site could have resources that are useful for JUST that type of website. This is better than the standard admin/webmaster forum resources section, which is almost entirely filled with generic add ons, styles and other things that don't really suit any particular niche. Whereas a gaming admin site could have things like clan features, high scores, member information for online services, etc and a car admin site could have garage add ons to download, maybe specially set up galleries, etc as well as styles made specifically for these kinds of websites and their audience.

So what do you think? Could an admin forum based around a specific website niche/subject area be more useful than a general one?

 

You might have something there. Might be useful to collectively work towards improving and providing what the general public want but each with it's own flavor.

 

It depends on what niche you have chosen. Is it something people like discussing and debating about? It more easy to succeed.

 

It could work and could be very helpful to the community that you get together, especially the part about gathering resources and tools that can help people in that specific niche.
The only downside is that it'll be harder to grow the community as you'll have less people to get who are interested in the specific topic.

 

In this case would growing the community reach outside the "specific niche"? Probably not but would it not be more of a specific niche think tank? So yeah the group would be small in relation to that specific niche.

 

It could work, and I'm tempted to try it out myself. You just need to select a niche that has a lot of forums, and get's a lot of new forums on a regular basis.

Admin forum for gaming forums would probably work out well, depending on how you've decided to promote it, and organize it.

 

I think it is easier to get people to join you if you are way more specific about what you are going to talk about and what the intention is in your mind. Its like targeting a certain part of the audience who like Ice Cream and telling them "Hey guys lets talk about ice cream" and clearly they will. General forums usually have some parts of them buzzing and other parts being really close to dead. What you need is a livewire, like a team that works to keep parts of the forum alive so that when people see it happening they can join the party and contribute.

So as long as you know you are good at something it is great to create a forum catering to specific knowledge but if you make a general forum you better be prepared for a LOT of different things to talk about or your forum's gonna die.

 

I've noticed that a lot of admins in my niche tend to be very competitive with each other. I know one admin that considers me his competition and will hardly talk to me even in professional settings. He seems to think we have some sort of football team like rivalry.... but aside from just being friendly with him at events where we meet, I virtually ignore his site.

 

As others pointed out, there's positives and negatives to a refined niche forum community. I'll touch on a few pro's and cons below.

Pro's:
1. Tight / Targeted micro-niche forums convert market specific advertisers better
2. Tight / Targeted micro-niche forums can dominate organic search for it's market easier
3. Tight / Targeted micro-niche forums can provide a bit more authority on the topic
4. Tight / Targeted micro-niche forums tend to have better ctr in a ppc environment
5. Tight / Targeted micro-niche forums tend to be easier to moderate / administer due to the small size

Con's:
1. Tight / Targeted micro-niche forums tend to have very small audiences
2. Tight / Targeted micro-niche forums tend to be capped on any growth potential
3. Tight / Targeted micro-niche forums tend to be less active

In Conclusion:
One really has to weigh out the above pro's and con's keeping in mind that while a more niched forum may convert better to targeted members / visitors, there's going to be a lot less members / visitors on the site to convert. Some micro-niches may prove to convert 5 people into buying or clicking something out of every 30 unique ip visitors. However, you may also find that a micro-niche only gets 40 unique IP visitors per month. Where as with a larger more general (or multiple niche) forum may prove to convert 5 out of every 200 unique IP visitors, yet it's pulling 10k visitors per month.

There's way to many different scenarios to get into at the moment. The bottom line is that it can be beneficial to have a micro-niche, however you want to make sure that you don't end up with a huge network of separate micro-niche forums that require lots of time on each to keep updated and active. You'll quickly find yourself putting in way more than you're getting out of it. Ideally, you're micro-niches should be as fully automated as possible requiring very little time investment each month.

For those that have been admining forums for a few years now and have grown a bit experiencing all the spam, scams, reports, bug fixes, trolling, etc. that comes along with having a forum. You'll know first hand what I mean when you start to picture trying to admin 5, 10, 30, 50 different micro-niche forums effectively all at once.

Potential Solution:
I think the most ideal solution for anyone looking to try to target multiple micro-niche markets is to start with a general niche & then break down categories within your forum into sub-forums to cover such micro-niches and then create independent marketing campaigns for each micro-niche sub-forum.

Just to clarify, here's an example of a general niche topic with sub-niches:
Level 1: General Category = Football
Level 2: Sub-Niche Category = Football stadiums
Level 3: Micro-Niche sub = Football Stadium Food, Football Stadium Seats, Football Stadium Designs, etc.
Level 4: Deep Micro-Niche Sub = Football Stadium Food HotDogs, Football Stadium Food Nachos, Football Stadium Food Beer, etc.

Examples using Admin's as the general category, as suggested by the thread starter:
Example #1
Level 1: General Category = Administrators
Level 2: Sub-Niche Category = Forum Admin
Level 3: Micro-Niche Sub = Forum Admin Structure, Forum Admin Staff Management, Forum Admin Software's, etc.
Level 4: Deep Micro-Niche Sub = Forum Admin Software's vBulletin, Forum Admin Software's Xenforo, Forum Admin Software's PhpBB, etc.

Example #2
Level 1: General Category = Administrators
Level 2: Sub-Niche Category = Medical Admin
Level 3: Micro-Niche Sub = Medical Admin Billing Systems, Medical Admin Strategy, Medical Admin Payroll, etc.
Level 4: Deep Micro-Niche Sub = Medical Admin Billing Systems Software, Medical Admin Billing Systems Procedures, Medical Admin Billing Systems Tutorials, etc.

This does a few things for you:
1. Allows you the ability to expand
2. Allows you to target micro-niches like you wanted
3. Allows you to still be an authority in a micro-market due to targeted marketing
4. Allows you to still maintain good conversion in each of the micro-niche sub-forums
5. Allows you to focus your efforts on one forum rather than 10, 20, 50 separate ones
6. Allows you to still generate organic search traffic for a micro-niche key word sequence

Eric Lyon

 

I think its a good idea, CM. The only issue I would see with it is competition. Competition as in, would another gaming forum admin want to join a forum that a gaming forum admin owns? I mean I have seen some competition fights on general admin forums that go horribly wrong... I'd hate to see it on a specific topic admin forum