Automatic or Personal Welcome of New Members?
In the upcoming article, i will discuss the importance of welcoming new members. Please select one of the options in the poll below.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!If you enjoy my posts, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!The first 3 things a forum visitor notices.
First time visitors are extremely picky and if they find something they dislike, they will most likely turn away. This may even be as small as not being able to find the register link with ease. This is why you need to keep your forum appealing and the navigation of the forum simple.
In this article, i will cover the first 3 things a visitor will notice when visiting your forum. Ready to blow your visitors away?
1. Your Forum Design.
Before you jump down my throat protesting that “content is king”, let me remind you that the first impression and what a member first views is the forum skin/appearance. If a visitor dislikes the forum appearance, he will simply leave. As simple as that.
A quality forum design is significant for a forum when it’s struggling through its early stages of development.
If a visitor sees a default design, or one they have seen a hundred times before, they may well stick around for a bit - but you will have lost the opportunity to impress your visitor from the outset.
2. The content of your forum
Needless to say, if you have no content then don’t expect any members. If you have low quality content, expect low quality members. If you want fantastic, engaging and loyal members, you need to create fantastic and engaging content.
There can be no shying away from this fact - if you don’t create content, you will not create members. Why would anyone join a forum with no content? It would be like sitting in an empty room all by yourself. Much better to go next door where there are people to talk to, right?
3. Your Board Statistics
When a visitor scrolls down your forum, they will definitely take a look at your board statistics. This piece of information contains your forum post/thread count and your total member count. If your forum only has a couple of hundred posts and a few members registered, it won’t be encouraging for guests. Why would a member join a ghost town?
So remember, try your best to improve your total post count by posting quality content and slowly develop your member base over time.
Your Thoughts
Do you disagree with the points? Have i missed anything? Share your thoughts and opinions by leaving a comment below.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!Spice up your Community Forum
Making your forum interesting and appealing for your members is highly significant and will impact on your forum success. Try to ’spice up’ your forum every now and then to maintain your members interests.
Here are some basic tips on keeping your forum appealing and interesting:
- Interesting Topics and Discussions - Can’t think of any? Visit some related forums and work off their forum discussions. Avoid copy and pasting their topics, be creative and develop new discussions but using theirs as a base.
- Be Open - Be open to member suggestions and feedback. Listen and respond to all suggestions, this is how you can improve your community for your members. (Developing a positive member relationship).
- Newsletter - Communicate with your Members - It’s important that the forum owner should always update their members through the announcements or newsletters. Don’t send an overwhelming amount of emails but maybe once every 2nd week. Keep your members updates with significant updates etc.
- Avoid Annoying Advertisements - Money! Make profit through other ways such as subscriptions. Avoid the Google advertisements or more importantly, flash advertisements which annoy forum users.
- Share your Revenue with your Members - Create contests and purchase prizes such as domains, hosting packages etc for your members. This will motivate your members more.
- Be Creative - It’s all about being unique but not to an extent which you lose your forum concept.
Feel free to leave a comment and share your thoughts and views on this entry.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!FREE .PSD Promotion Banner!
At MESKOS Blog, i will also be releasing free and premium forum resources for forum owners. I hope they will assist you and your community.
The graphic below is a promotion banner used to advertise your forum. Within the Zip file, you will see a .Gif (Sample) and the .PSD file.
To edit the text, open the PSD file, then click the “Edit this Folder” tab. (Seen in the screenshot below).
Preview:
Download:
Click HERE to download the .PSD file.
Please give your comments to make this effort worthwhile for me. 
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!Bringing Life into a Dead Forum
Maybe when you first started your community, you didn’t realize how much time you needed to create quality content. Perhaps you didn’t spend enough time on your forum to lift it from the ground. Whatever the reason was, your forum is now quiet and a lonely community without much activity.
Don’t despair though, as it’s always possible to kick a dead forum back into life.
Are you prepared and Committed?
Your community went down for a reason. It’s stale and dead but are you prepared to be committed and bring some life back into your dead community? If you are planning to do so, one key factor is the forum owner’s enthusiasm. If you can’t maintain a high enthusiasm for more than a month, it may be challenging to achieve any success.
Think about how your online community got into its current condition, and what will be needed to avoid that happening again. If you are sure you are ready for the challenge, here is what I advise you to do.
Steps to Bringing Life into a Dead Forum
Consider a Redesign.
Redesigning your forum with a fresh appearance will attract your members attention. It shows that you are caring for the community and willing to spend time to revive it. If you have funds, spend a few $xx on a new custom skin or if you are financially limited, you can find many free but quality forum skins on Google.
More and More Fresh Content.
Content makes up your forum. Without content, there won’t be members. Without members there won’t be interaction. And without interaction, there is no community.
Your forum probably died from the lack of content being posted on a regular basis. If someone arrives at your forum and sees no content, they might aswell leave and forget about your community, why? because they can’t find anything interesting.
So don’t let this happen. Start creating content! If it’s needed, dedicate a week to just filling up the forum with quality content (Polls, discussions, debates, surveys etc).
Setting Targets, Achieving Goals.
Set targets for yourself. Write down or save a document which has the number of posts you want to have within a period of time. Decide how many link exchanges you want to make within a week. Set a number of posts you should post in a day.
Remember to set targets for every stage of your forum.
Bulk-Emailing your members.
You would be wasting your time if no one knows about the hard work you put into reviving the forum. Stated in my A Community is like a Beautiful Woman article, “Beauty must be seen to be appreciated”.
How can you contact all your old members and notify them about the fresh changes? Bulk-Email them. All forum softwares will have a feature which sends an email to all members of a board.
Some members will need some convincing for them to return. In your message, really talk up the forum renovation and the quality content. Include links to parts of the community which will convince them.
Don’t stop, Keep going.
You’ve spent days in renovating your forum. You will most likely see a new boost in activity but in most cases they slowly die off again. You must maintain the momentum and never let it stop. Continue to interact with your members, and continue to keep them happy.
Remember to advertise your forum in every way possible and don’t let your enthusiasm drop. Keep a positive attitude towards your community and remain committed.
Now watch your forum rise from the ashes!
Feel free to leave a comment and share your thoughts and views on this entry.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
