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Discussion in 'Managing Your Online Community' started by Rebel, Aug 19, 2014.

  1. Rebel

    Rebel Regular Member

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    Not to say I don't have activity but it's slow pickings. I have my crowd and they seem to only post at certain times, certain topics, and mostly when I post first. The board hasn't gotten to the point of sustaining itself and I'm already 2K posts in personally. We do active members. We have about 30 of them but most of the time all they do is log in and I don't actually see them post. I think most see the potential in the community and want to keep their accounts active for when it booms with activity, but despite requests, no one really seems to be interested in helping get to said activity boom. I'm having a real hard time and advertising on reddit has proven to be very ineffective. I've been on plenty of boards with sig links and all and it's worked...just not often.

    What can I do to increase activity, get new members, and make this forum less dependent on me??! Every other week I'm afraid it's going to die out but we seem to keep chugging along somehow. What are good advertising strategies (I don't mind putting money to these things either).

    HELP!! SOS!! LOL.
     
    Rebel, Aug 19, 2014
    #1
  2. Andy R

    Andy R Lurker Administrator Admin Talk Staff

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    What's your URL?

    Have you openly discussed this issue with your members? If not, consider it. Many are willing to lend a hand and help try to stimulate the site.
     
    Andy R, Aug 19, 2014
    #2
  3. Rebel

    Rebel Regular Member

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    http://www.politicaldebateforums.com/

    Yes, I have exhaustively discussed this with our members. I've messaged, emailed, asked, and made partnerships and more. We've even gone through and entire round of staff members due to activity. It's terrible.
     
    Rebel, Aug 19, 2014
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  4. Andy R

    Andy R Lurker Administrator Admin Talk Staff

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    I don't like shoutboxes, I think they provide the users a way to chat which circumvents the threads. So I would suggest not having a shoutbox but it might be too late now that the members have one and it might be one of the items that's actually getting used.

    Have you thought about doing any RSS to thread integrations? I've seen it where people can setup RSS feeds and star items which then create new threads. Good for getting opinions on news but bad for SEO.
     
    Andy R, Aug 19, 2014
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  5. Rebel

    Rebel Regular Member

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    No I haven't really tried RSS but I don't want to hurt our SEO either. Google's going to kill anything that copies/pastes from other sources and that might not actually work at all. It might work against me. People can see right through that sort of thing pretty easily. As for the Shout Box...it's not hurting us. It's been there for 2 months I think it's been used two or three times this week and that's it for it's entire history.
     
    Rebel, Aug 19, 2014
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  6. Janet H

    Janet H Administrator Admin Talk Staff

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    There are a few things you might try. Change up your welcome message to encourage new members to post an intro - you would need a place on your board for this, but it goes a long way to building community. Review your topics areas. Are there too many? Fewer topic areas with more content makes the place seem busier. Is it easy to determine where a new thread goes? Make sure you have a general discussion area in case a member isn't sure what the best bin is. You can always move threads. Be patient - new boards are slow to gather momentum.
     
    Janet H, Aug 21, 2014
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