How to build a successful forum community for your website

agentsmith · #1 (**permalink**) 12th June 2006, 02:24 AM

Let's say you have a nice website, a small database of users or customers, and now you wanna bring in more people with a user forum so other people can generate your contents for better ranking, and etc etc, do you think you have what it takes to make it?

Chances are, if you don't have an impressive number of posts to begin with, the moment a user enters the forum and sees very few posts, they're gonna leave, so, what's the secret to making it big in forum business??

Be smart! You can't do it all on your own, find a forum provider to do it for you, they'll get you the exposure, get you the set up, and with their assisting traffic, drive some to your site (provided it's a targeted traffic), that way, you can at least hope to make it right the moment you start out, and eventually, create a busy forum, with traffic giving you all the benefits, not to mention, people signing up to your forum gives you a new database to try and sell your products and services, so, you don't wanna do it wrong and leave a bad impression on the traffic you're bringing in right?

Don't be a lone-ranger in the world of e-business, you can't do everything alone and expect to come out as a big winner!

varchar · #2 (**permalink**) 21st June 2006, 07:45 AM

Very good, yet obvious advice. It should go without saying that if you get a solid userbase behind any website, there's heaps of money to be made.

Look at MySpace, they're a prime example. What was once some guy's friend network is now being sued for $30 million because he aparently facilitated the rape of some girl. Rape isn't good, but being big enough to be accused of causing it is.

andreasbard · #3 (**permalink**) 26th June 2006, 07:01 AM

Great posts guys!

Yes, an empty forum will not take you far. Content is so important when building a forum, that is for sure.

I really believe in hiring forum posters to ge it going with a couple of thousand posts and some members and I can see the trend for this since new forum content providers pop up every day now.

//Andreas

montee51 · #4 (**permalink**) 29th June 2006, 11:32 PM

Forum posters are a way to kick start a new forum but also moderation has to play a key part. Too much product placement/self promotion just drives people away eventually. It has to stay fresh and topical and always be relevant to its users.

sourabhweb · #5 (**permalink**) 13th July 2006, 05:53 AM

It is really an nice post.I just want to say that all the members of a forum should think the forum as his own house and only post relevant posts.As we keep our house clean from garbages, forum mebers also should keep forum clean from unnecesary posts.

A moderator can take a vital role but if all the forum members are not co-opearative, he can hardly do anything.

Cheers,

Sourabh.

maggots · #6 (**permalink**) 15th January 2007, 09:57 PM

Quote:

A moderator can take a vital role but if all the forum members are not co-opearative, he can hardly do anything.

you're very right my friend, i was a moderator in lotsa forums before, and i gotta say, it's no easy job keeping forums decent, alive and exciting all the time, the quality of the members and their passion for the topics are the utmost important element you can wish for