It is quite hard to build a fresh new forum especially when it is your first time. You will be encountering things that will test your patience and your dedication to what you are doing. We all know that the main target of a forum is not just to post informative contents, but to gather people to join the community and this is one of the hardest parts of forum building. But, if you know what to do, you you'll have a better chance of passing through this stage.
Here are some things that you should know when you plan to start a new forum:
The Start
You must always remember PCUC. What is PCUC?
1. People - Before putting up your forum, evaluate yourself. Who are you target audience? For example, your target audience are those who are fond of playing online and offline games, then you should be able to know what are the trends and what would be the information that you can offer to help them.
2. Creativity - In starting a forum, you must know how to grab hold of the people's interest when they first take the first glance on your forum. The truth is, the presentation of your forum is a plus in your overall stand. It is not bad to be inventive, as a matter of fact, it is really something that a forum owner should possess in order for him/her to show that the forum itself was built and given so much attention to.
3. Uniqueness - It is quite hard to show the people that your forum is a unique one. We all know that every forum has that certain uniqueness when compared to others. That is the point, think of something that will be your advantage to the other forums. For an instance, if you plan to build a gaming forum, you should have a section which other gaming forums don't have. Also, you can only say that it is an advantage when it has helpful contents. Having such section, with no posts can mean nothing.
4. Content - This is the main important key before starting a forum. If you want to gain more people in your forum, then you must always know that this is the most essential part of the process. The contents of your forum must be bold, interesting, appealing and most especially, informative. You should have a regular and up-to-date posts so that the people will keep track of the activities in your forum.
The problems that often arise in the beginning stage of your forum:
- People don't know about your forum, because of the fact that it is new.
- People don't want to join your forum because there are no members yet.
- People who joined your forum are not active.
- People don't want to post anything to your forum.
- People leave.
- The contents of your forum is outdated.
- Posts with no replies.
- Spammers join and ruin the your forum's mood.
- Advertisers come and encourage your few people to leave and join theirs.
- Out of patience to wait for the community to grow.
- The only people who are actively participating are just your staff.
What can I do to the above problems?
1. In engaging yourself in forum life, then you must always remember that the people are important. It is hard to get several people in just a day without doing anything. Advertise. Advertise. Advertise. The more you advertise your forum, the more potential members that you can get. The more advertising you make, the more visitors you gain.
2. Make some accounts. This is one of the ways to show people that there are registered members to your forum. By doing this, you can give an impression to the visitors that there are other people, aside from them visited and registered. Having 0 registered members, could possibly have a negative impact to your forum. So you must do something about it.
3. Invite your friends to join your forum. Ask them to register and help you with the advertising process. You can not effectively do the advertising all by yourself. Ask other people to help you because it will be faster and the more you advertise, the more people you gather.
4. Always check your forum's status. Delete all threads made by spammers and advertisers. Keep track of the daily visits that your forum have.
5. Just keep your patience up. The start is really hard, but you can never tell what tomorrow could bring. So stay your hopes up.
6. Even though your forum is new, you should have interesting contents already.
The forum's mid stage
If you successfully gained people to join your forum, what can you do to make them stay? What can you do to have more people?
1. Just keep posting new threads about what is trending.
2. Advertise more!
3. Help the new members especially when you know the answer to their queries.
4. Encourage your staff to be more helpful.
5. Host events/contests in your forum.
6. Just do the same process, always check the status of your forum. Also, it is recommended to check other competitors' forums in order for you to have an idea on what new stuff are on trend.
When the forum has numerous active members
This is the stage that every forum owner is waiting for. What should you do now if you reached what you want to achieve?
1. Do not stop advertising, the fact that your forum is famous and you have numerous members is not an assurance that your forum will stay lively forever. You must take good care of your forum status.
2. Do not let the forum grow by itself.
3. Do not tolerate your staff who are just slacking off. Encourage your staff to still help.
4. Be sure that the members of your forum feel that they belong and that they are being heard.
5. Be an active owner.
6. Have more sections to your forum to increase the scope and the grounds of your members.
Take time to relax, Rome is not built in a day. Building a good forum is hard, but as long as you love what you're doing and you are doing everything for the betterment of your forum, soon enough you'll have favorable results.
Here are some things that you should know when you plan to start a new forum:
The Start
You must always remember PCUC. What is PCUC?
1. People - Before putting up your forum, evaluate yourself. Who are you target audience? For example, your target audience are those who are fond of playing online and offline games, then you should be able to know what are the trends and what would be the information that you can offer to help them.
2. Creativity - In starting a forum, you must know how to grab hold of the people's interest when they first take the first glance on your forum. The truth is, the presentation of your forum is a plus in your overall stand. It is not bad to be inventive, as a matter of fact, it is really something that a forum owner should possess in order for him/her to show that the forum itself was built and given so much attention to.
3. Uniqueness - It is quite hard to show the people that your forum is a unique one. We all know that every forum has that certain uniqueness when compared to others. That is the point, think of something that will be your advantage to the other forums. For an instance, if you plan to build a gaming forum, you should have a section which other gaming forums don't have. Also, you can only say that it is an advantage when it has helpful contents. Having such section, with no posts can mean nothing.
4. Content - This is the main important key before starting a forum. If you want to gain more people in your forum, then you must always know that this is the most essential part of the process. The contents of your forum must be bold, interesting, appealing and most especially, informative. You should have a regular and up-to-date posts so that the people will keep track of the activities in your forum.
The problems that often arise in the beginning stage of your forum:
- People don't know about your forum, because of the fact that it is new.
- People don't want to join your forum because there are no members yet.
- People who joined your forum are not active.
- People don't want to post anything to your forum.
- People leave.
- The contents of your forum is outdated.
- Posts with no replies.
- Spammers join and ruin the your forum's mood.
- Advertisers come and encourage your few people to leave and join theirs.
- Out of patience to wait for the community to grow.
- The only people who are actively participating are just your staff.
What can I do to the above problems?
1. In engaging yourself in forum life, then you must always remember that the people are important. It is hard to get several people in just a day without doing anything. Advertise. Advertise. Advertise. The more you advertise your forum, the more potential members that you can get. The more advertising you make, the more visitors you gain.
2. Make some accounts. This is one of the ways to show people that there are registered members to your forum. By doing this, you can give an impression to the visitors that there are other people, aside from them visited and registered. Having 0 registered members, could possibly have a negative impact to your forum. So you must do something about it.
3. Invite your friends to join your forum. Ask them to register and help you with the advertising process. You can not effectively do the advertising all by yourself. Ask other people to help you because it will be faster and the more you advertise, the more people you gather.
4. Always check your forum's status. Delete all threads made by spammers and advertisers. Keep track of the daily visits that your forum have.
5. Just keep your patience up. The start is really hard, but you can never tell what tomorrow could bring. So stay your hopes up.
6. Even though your forum is new, you should have interesting contents already.
The forum's mid stage
If you successfully gained people to join your forum, what can you do to make them stay? What can you do to have more people?
1. Just keep posting new threads about what is trending.
2. Advertise more!
3. Help the new members especially when you know the answer to their queries.
4. Encourage your staff to be more helpful.
5. Host events/contests in your forum.
6. Just do the same process, always check the status of your forum. Also, it is recommended to check other competitors' forums in order for you to have an idea on what new stuff are on trend.
When the forum has numerous active members
This is the stage that every forum owner is waiting for. What should you do now if you reached what you want to achieve?
1. Do not stop advertising, the fact that your forum is famous and you have numerous members is not an assurance that your forum will stay lively forever. You must take good care of your forum status.
2. Do not let the forum grow by itself.
3. Do not tolerate your staff who are just slacking off. Encourage your staff to still help.
4. Be sure that the members of your forum feel that they belong and that they are being heard.
5. Be an active owner.
6. Have more sections to your forum to increase the scope and the grounds of your members.
Take time to relax, Rome is not built in a day. Building a good forum is hard, but as long as you love what you're doing and you are doing everything for the betterment of your forum, soon enough you'll have favorable results.
