New Forum Admin Advice; Post on your own site regularly

I see this all the time. People come on admin forums and ask why their new forum is dying/not getting more active/not doing so well. Everyone then pretty much says the usual stuff about how forums are on the way out or how it's just bad luck, you know the drill.

But then I actually look at their forum and notice something.

They don't even post on their own site regularly.

Maybe at best they've posted once or twice in the last 24 hours (usually just replying to topics), maybe they've literally not done anything at all for the last day/week/month and hoped their magical users would save their forum and post hundreds of posts a day without any admin intervention.

How the hell do they expect their forum to keep doing well then? Forums aren't easy, you don't just set up some content on day 1 then sit around for the few months while your forums are magically filled with new content on a daily basis.

It might sometimes seem like that initially. Maybe you've got a popular blog or wiki, or are a Youtube celebrity, or actually famous offline. But it won't last. No one is 'popular' enough that people can keep their site going for them while they sit back and do nothing, and I've seen tons and tons of popular sites and people open forums whch have failed in mere weeks.

So here's some very simple, extremely obvious advice for forum management. Post constantly. Posts news and articles you find interesting. Write your own articles on at least a weekly basis and start your own topics in your forum for members to reply to. You won't get anywhere doing nothing at all, and the world doesn't owe you living, so keep your site interesting with regularly, hopefully at least daily content.

 

Great article @CM30 I agree, an owner sets the standards for the user base. If the owner isn't too active, the community won't be either. But, its a group effort between the owner, staff members, and users. Anyone can get the forum going - its up to the other members to response. I usually see a lot of forum owners give up after a few months because they figured it out that its very time-consuming to keep a forum going strong.

Especially if you lack the funds to promote it, or the funds to run contests. Quality content for the win though, that's how you win users.

 

Agreed...

My motto is, if the community is inactive, that is the perfect time for you [the forum owner] to start posting new threads and keep a fresh constant flow of new and unique content going

 

Yeah, sometimes you feel like you're talking to yourself, but constant activity is a must. Even few threads/day in the slow times can really make a difference. People are visiting sites DAILY and some actually visit forums for days in a row before deciding to join. Keep them entertained with constant good support and you can really make it.

 

I agree @dojo. To ease the feeling of talking to yourself, that is where the new topics come into play. There is always articles as well. Like when blogging, you can write the article and just assume people are reading even if they are not making comments, haha. Eventually someone is going to want to comment and then when that happens, its important that your review the topic or articles and determine what made them want to comment and start writing future content within that structure so that you increase chances for more people to want to respond to your content. At least that has worked for me many times before...

 

I feel the same way dojo, it does feel like you are talking to yourself sometimes. Hopefully, all the work will pay off with more members.

 

Yes. Its an interesting point. Most of these new forums admins does indeed post very regularly, but that doesn't mean that their forum shall succeed. They still need active members, and they come mostly with promotion and investment.

In certain high traffic forums, I have seen admins with negligible post counts. They may have actually invested a bit to grow their forums into what its now. Maybe that's the reason why their post count is low.

 

I agree. You know, even if a forum becomes huge and is largely successful the users like to see that the admin cares through his actual posts. It brings forth a whole new respect for the community. At least that's always been how I've felt towards it.

 

Depends on many things whether a forum admin 'needs' to post regularly. I mean, for a lot of bigger sites, how do you know the admin didn't used to post regularly? Because once your site reaches a certain size, you don't need to post quite as much to keep it going, and eventually the sheer amount of members and posts mean many people will end up with more posts than you via luck alone.

Maybe the forum's in a really good niche and was the first one in the area, or had another source of traffic attached to it that was updated a lot (like a blog or news site).

But I've seen many examples of the opposite, hence why I posted the article. I've seen well known people opening forums and failing because they didn't post enough. I've seen large sites open forums that failed because the staff didn't post enough. If you don't post enough, it's more likely you'll fail than succeed, simple as.

 

Yes, I do agree to that fact, and they might have posted regularly in their forums when it was still in its nascent stage. But how do you see a forum, where all the threads are started by the admin of the forum? That does smell like a failure to me too, unless they get enough members soon.

Rather than the admin posting regularly, I think its a better idea for the admin to create some fake accounts and post regularly using these accounts. Atleast that shall give us the impression that there is indeed some activity within the forum.

 

You don't. I've very, very rarely seen a site where the admin is the only one posting topics. Well I have, but that was a special case:

http://www.cracked.com/article_18792_the-7-most-unintentionally-creepy-places-internet.html

See number 5 on the list. But other than that, the point is generally that people will only start topics if the admin has started some first. I've generally found it's pretty hard to get users to post new topics of their own accord on many forums, I've seen it on nearly every forum I'm a member of. So ideally the admin should post a few each day, at which point the other members might be more inspired to post themselves.

 

I have seen plenty of such forums, though I dont remember a name to name it here. After all, when a forum begins, its just the admin as the user, and unless they are ready to invest money into it, we shall see all the forum threads started by the admin. I have seen in some forums, where the admins shall simple copy paste the threads from other forums and make new threads in their forums.

Yes. I have seen that in plenty of forums where I'm a member of. If its a new forum, new members shall have trouble starting up new threads, and its generally the admin or some moderators who shall give the push.