MESKOS Forum Development Blog

Members love to Follow the Leader

Have you noticed that your members imitate those who they admire or find inspiration from? Take advantage of this and set a good example, then watch your members follow the leader.

The background of Following the Leader.

When your forum is new, member #1 (usually the forum owner) is the most valuable member. The owner is the one expected to post up new content, solve disputes, welcome new members and actively interact in the forum discussions. New members are not too sure about the atmosphere (the personality) of the forum, so it’s your job to develop it and display to them how it is.

The most influential stage of the Forum.

The most influential stage of the forum is the establishment stage. Your members are clueless about the personality and atmosphere of the forum, so it’s your duty to show it to them. They see you as a leader, they try to become you by inspiring off your online-personality.

Example: It can be as small as this, if your forum signature was laid out nicely. Eg.

/ forumadministrator

Slowly, you will notice members becoming more and more influenced and adding short text signatures like (forummember, forumnamemember etc). We’ve all seen it happen before.

How to take this opportunity for our advantage.

We now know that members unconsciously follow trends and the personality of the forum (and the owner), over a period of time. How can we take this opportunity for our advantage?

Lets say we are developing a forum based around gaming; in this case, we want to create a strong gaming atmosphere. How can we do that? When welcoming new members, you can include small gaming related questions to emphasis the forum concept. Slowly, your members will follow this trend and also do the same.

Every now and then, forum owners ask me “how do i make my members more active?”, “how do i encourage them to post?”, “how do i motivate my members to write more quality posts”. The answer is, lead by example and let them follow. If you want you members to post more, lead by example and make new posts daily, Want your members to write more quality posts? lead by example; dedicate a couple of minutes to finalize your post(s) by fixing any errors, spelling mistakes etc.

Remember, members don’t follow your trends/behavior overnight. Give it time, constantly emphasis the forums personality and trends. Once your members become familiar with the forum, you will notice how they mimic your behavior.

Your Views and Inputs

Have you seen members ‘follow the leader by mimicking your behavior’? or have you joined in with the community and followed different forum trends? Share your points of views and experiences by leaving a comment to this entry.