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.

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Stop Forum Spam!

Stop Forum Spam!

I found a website which provides you a list of common forum spammers. You can stop forum spamming by banning their IP’s, emails or usernames.

Visit Stop Forum Spam.

Hope you find this useful.

© MESKOS Forum Development Blog 2008
Reading Your Way to Success.
Building a Successful Forum.

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Do you make these common forum mistakes?

Building an online community is hard work. For a forum to be successful it needs quality content, dedicated members and daily interaction. All these necessities are linked (triggered by a chain reaction). Put it this way, without quality content, there will be no dedicated members. Without dedicated members, there will be no interaction. As simple as that.

Read the rest of this entry »

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United we stand, Divided we Fall.

United we stand, Divided we Fall.
Developing a forum, is like fighting a war! (Exaggerated)

Let me define the title of this article;
“United we Stand” - If your forum staff and members can get along with each other, eliminate as much disputes as possible and create a warm community, your forum will stand and be successful.
“Divided we Fall” - Just like a human pyramid, if we lose each other (separated), we will collapse, same as a forum, if the staff or/and members can’t get along with each other, the forum will slowly die out.

There are many small factors which cause the dis-functioning of a forum. In regards to this topic here are the following:

• Staff abusing position/power.
• Disputes between staff and members.
• Disputes/Disturbance within the Staff team.
• Due to status and power, ignorance and keeping a line between staff and members.

Staff abusing position/power which causes Disputes.

Many inexperienced staff members will sometime abuse their position/power. To be honest, i have as well (back when i first joined a gaming forum). The abuse of power comes from inexperienced members or a members character.

Abusing position or power is when a member of staff gives out warnings without consideration (unfairly), changes situations towards their favor or any act which gains them power by influencing members because of their rank.

These acts causes disputes between members and staff and may cause members to leave the forum. This has happened at quite a few forums i use to visit. As a reminder, act fairly, only make judgments over evidence and never have an bias/opinionated thought over disputes etc.

If you sense a member is abusing his power, warn them or if needed, drop them from the team or it will cause a significant impact on the forums activity.

Disputes within the Staff team.

Disputes within the staff team are extremely common (depending on how well you select your staff). Disputes may be caused by the following reasons.

• The firing of a staff member.
• Favoring.
• Character/Personality/Egotistic Clashes. (A main factor)
• Promotions of New Staff.
• And many more.

To prevent or eliminate as much staff disputes as possible is to take the time to select quality staff. Not all judgments are made on their forum performance but also you need to take into consideration their offside activities/hobbies/interests etc. You can read one of my previous entries; Choosing your Staff, Your Future.

Also as an administrator, try to even out your staff members. Keep them motivated and try to encourage interaction between themselves so they slowly build up a friendship. This will allow them to understand each other a lot more and can reason with each others disagreements etc.

How can you? Invite them to regular mass MSN chat conversations, let them add each other, create a chatroom etc.

Good luck with your forum!

© MESKOS Forum Development Blog 2008

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Forum Contests, Forum Success?

Forum Contest Ideas
Fresh Contest, Fresh Members, Fresh Forum.

To spice up your forum, refresh the community or just an event to regain members interest, all comes down to a forum revamp or a forum contest. Contests are useful as it brings all the active members together and motivates interaction (depending on the contest idea).

If the forum staff team can manage the contest effeciently and effectively, it can really bring back a lot of old and new traffic.

Here are some contest ideas which can be used as a guideline for your forum(s):

• Referral Contest.
  - Winner will be judged on most referrals.
  - More points if the referrals post.
• Posting Contest.
  - The basic, “Who ever can post the most wins”.
  - Distribute additional post points for quality topics/replies made.
• Advanced Posting Contest.
  - Who can create the most active topic? (encourages members to start interesting topics)
  - Post a statement and allow every member to write an interesting paragraph on it. Most interesting, would be the winner.
• Content Contests.
  - Article writing.
  - Poetry writing.
  - Create the topic concept in regards to your forum genre.
• Treasure Hunts.
  - Create riddles in different parts of the forum.
  - Let your members find their way to the treasure.
• Digital Contests.
  - Award the winner by using their design on your forum. (Eg. Banner).
  - Photo Contest. (Who ever can be most unique in a photo?)
• Simulation Contests. (Used on one of my old forums, was successful and loved)
  - Create a simulation (depending on your forum genre) and judge the best response.
  - Example: I use to run an admin forum, where administrators could share managing tips etc. I had a section called the “Admin Simulation” where i would develop a situation where members had to put themselves into the situation and reply with a well written response.
  - The winner can be selected on the quality of the response.

I hope this will refresh your ideas. If you have any new contest ideas, feel free to submit them through the comment feature.

Written by
Michael. W
© MESKOS Forum Development Blog 2008
Redistribution of this article will be violating copyright laws.
Please contact me if you would like this doc. submitted to your forum/website.

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