How Do you Get Active Members for forum?

tdbnz

tdbnz

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Hi Everyone

Does anyone have good tips to get members and to be able to get members to be more active on your forum ?

I find people either visit / Join but then hardly ever come back unless I do Post Exchanges or encourage them back

Any advice appreciated
 
I think most people just need a good start. If you can get some posts in your forum even if it's not a ton, it does help a lot. Keep in mind, each thread you make is actually a new link that can be put in google. Each post doubles your chances of getting found.
 
tdbnz said:
I find people either visit / Join but then hardly ever come back unless I do Post Exchanges or encourage them back
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You're not alone. I have nothing helpful to say but I tried and I failed. I had the very same issues that you had. I went and searched far and wide for ways to get my forum to become a shining community that I dreamed it could be. Unfortunately I ended it. Why keep going? I felt I had better things to do then kick a dead horse.
 
I always thought that having quality content and good threads with a fair amount of posts attracts people.. but there's something else. Most youngsters don't like forums, they just go with all that web 2.0 things.
 
Laifot said:
Most youngsters don't like forums, they just go with all that web 2.0 things.
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It seems the most successful forums that I've seen are those that are attached to video game websites like Playstation. XBOX, Hyperkin, Bethesda where people can order games and go on the forum and get support, even Steam has their own forum, porn websites have memberships and a forum that is pretty active, and uh.....that's all I can think of.
 
Terminated said:
It seems the most successful forums that I've seen are those that are attached to video game websites like Playstation. XBOX, Hyperkin, Bethesda where people can order games and go on the forum and get support, even Steam has their own forum, porn websites have memberships and a forum that is pretty active, and uh.....that's all I can think of.
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People only look on forum when they have some problems. For everything else.. there's twitter or instagram sheeesh!
 
Laifot said:
People only look on forum when they have some problems.
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Pretty much. There are some forums that have been mildly successful and then there are still small community forums that exist with FP that are still going strong.
 
The only ones that still gets love are those with tons of faithful members, starting from scratch is really tough.
 
Laifot said:
The only ones that still gets love are those with tons of faithful members, starting from scratch is really tough.
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Yeah, I've come across ancient forums that have been around since 2000 and other since 2007. I was thinking damn, the owner must be really dedicated to keeping a community going for 20 some odd years.
 
Usually the ones who have lasted the longest and have the strongest core memberbase are usually focused on a particular niche. There were a few of them on Zetaboards, like a KOEI community that I have no idea what happened when ZB closed.
 
Phenom said:
Usually the ones who have lasted the longest and have the strongest core memberbase are usually focused on a particular niche. There were a few of them on Zetaboards, like a KOEI community that I have no idea what happened when ZB closed.
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All of those "sharing" forums went downhill since 2015 big close of Mega. It's been really difficult to rise, everything is going the wrong way in the web too.
 
I'll promote on my existing sites and also use signature links and what not.
 
zoldos said:
I'll promote on my existing sites and also use signature links and what not.
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That's a more passive way, maybe it could guide potential users to the site.. but what to do to make them stay?
 
It often helps if you can promote your forum on facebook groups. Create thread that matches with facebook group discussion and you can redirect people to your forum threads. And that also works out for many forums these days. People sign up if they like such forums.
 
I think doing post exchanges is a good way to start getting more members and hopefully active ones. With more threads and posts to respond to, potential members will see that there's at least some activity going on and will most likely join. Offering new ideas or possibly awards to members can help keep them coming back. I also tend to promote my sites on other forums too, this helps spread the word about your new community.
 
Ravenfreak said:
I think doing post exchanges is a good way to start getting more members and hopefully active ones. With more threads and posts to respond to, potential members will see that there's at least some activity going on and will most likely join. Offering new ideas or possibly awards to members can help keep them coming back. I also tend to promote my sites on other forums too, this helps spread the word about your new community.
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Yes, post exchanges are good but once you stop, the others also stop. So it's something that needs to be ongoing and can be time consuming to maintain especially when juggling other things too.
 
It's hard at the start because you need a bit of luck. We have a good group of core members here at Discussion Hub that arrived from a few different places and it helped a lot that they stayed on and became active members of the community.

After that, I guess only advertising can help you grow even further.
 
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