MESKOS Forum Development Blog

Why making Forums Private is a Bad Idea.

Private forums take place on every forum online. They are most common in hiding staff rooms, so administrators and moderators can have exclusive (behind the scene) discussions about the forum, without members peering and leaking out information. This is how it should be.

Some forum owners, hide all their forums from visitors and only allow access to them when a member registers (or has an activated account). The only types of forums which should have their whole forum private are, family forums, personal forums, business forums etc. Why? Because they are not trying to gain public members but rather contact their clients/friends. If you are trying to gain members for your community, and your target is forum growth, your forum should be public.

Here are 3 reasons on how privatising your forum will affect your forum success.

If i can’t see what i’m joining for, why should i bother?

Some people decide to turn their forums on private to maximize registration rates. Example: they will want to register, so that they can see what the community is like. But generally, this stratergy will backfire and result in the total opposite.

Members usually decide to register because they see the content or a discussion which they want to reply to (interact with). So remember, keep your forum opened to the public. Allow them to read your discussions, if they think its worth it, then you have scored a new dedicated member. But if you force visitors to register just to view those discussions, more than likely, they will turn away and never return.

Hiding something from us? I’ll pass.

To some visitors, the reason why forums are set to private is because of illegal activity (trading music, copyrighted programs, softwares etc) or other activities which they don’t want the public to see. Especially those music and movie forums which require registering before gaining access to visit the forums.

This is another reason why setting forums to private may affect your forum growth. It will impact on your registration rate as members don’t wish to take any risk in joining the forum because they ‘assume’ there might be suspicious activity going on behind the scene which in most cases isn’t true. The bottom line is, visitors may have misinterpretations on your forum.

Search Engines can’t Index you!

For any community that is really looking to grow, this is reason enough. Search Engines provide large amounts of traffic for forums. Turn your forum public so it allows search engines to view your content and also index it into their search engine.

Every topic made on your forum is a potential advertiser. If your forum is set to public, each topic is indexed within a search engine. (Eg. Google). For example: If you made a topic about ‘Photo Effect Tutorial(s)’ and someone searched those keywords in Google, they may hit your result and view your forum. Depending on the quality of your content and if they like what they see, you may have scored a new member. Just remember, let those search engine spiders crawl your forum and not close the door on them.

If search engines can’t index your content, you are cutting off a potentially big source of traffic and limiting yourself in a truly unnecessary way.

Just remember, there are many negatives towards turning your forum private. It affects your registration rates significantly, is that what your aiming to do?

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

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

The Well Known, Quality not Quantity!

The Well Known, Quality not Quantity! (PART 1)
5 Ways to improve your forum quality.

Maintaining quality content within a forum is difficult for forum administrators because its usually most difficult. As you can see many forums may be based on a unique topic but their off-topic, general chat or
spam areas are most active and hold the majority of the boards total post. This is quantity not quality.
Of course, there are many other quality problems that forum face: members posting useless or immature responses, people who like to write in “IM speak”, spamming, unanswered questions, and many other problems can also affect the quality of a forum.

Within this article, i will provide a number of tips which will assist you in maintaining quality not quantity.

Emphasis on Topical Forums

90% of forums have administrative topics or general discussions located at the top of their boards. “Announcements, Suggestions” etc. The top half of the forum should contain all your significant (focused) topics, why? because it’s what visitors/members first see. You need to emphasis your forums focus, make it easy for your members to participate in the topical discussions. Example: If your forum is related to gaming, move all your gaming discussion forums to the top and locate your announcements, introductions etc
underneath.

Control the Spamming/Illegal Advertising

You must control the amount of spam and advertising throughout your forum. Have strict guidelines on where and where you can’t advertise. Many users try to find loopholes in your TOS and rules to advertise. Example: the General Chat forum. Users may take advantage of weak guidelines and create a topic similar to: “Post your forums here” and leave a link to their forum and never return. Remember to be focused.

Encourage Quality Posting

There are many ways to improve the quality of posts from your members. Award members publicly when they post a quality topic. Let your community acknowledge the fact they get awarded for the quality not quantity. Also try to encourage your members not to post with IM language as its difficult for ‘older generation’ members to understand. Such terminology includes: “Lol, Rofl, Brb” etc.

Follow The Leader

As an administrator of a forum, you must set a good example. If you take the time in creating quality posts, your members will find you inspiring and also do the same, its psychological.

Promote Wisely

As stated in some of my previous entries, promote wisely. Only exchange with forums which you would like their members to associate with your forum. Example, if you advertised at a Random Chat Room, yes you would gain main visits but are they worth much? and are those really the type of people you want at your forum?

Well, here is another entry of mine.
Good luck with your forum and always remember, Quality not Quantity.

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

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Importance of “Slogons”

Importance of “Slogons” (Combining the 2 words, Slogan and Logos together)
The importance of Slogans and Logos towards a forum!

What makes a good Logo?

• Simple - Just like the Nike tick. A symbol of a ’swoosh’ and a tick.
• Eye-Catching - Grabs the attention of the visitor instantly.
• The graphical logo design must relate to your forum content.
• Avoid the complicated and confusing designs.
• Colouring - Must flow and match the fit in with the forum colour scheme.

Here are some examples, notice how simple they are?

What makes a good Slogan?

• Easily memorized.
• Symbolic, once someone hears the slogan, your forum should pop into their heads. (Try to emphasis the slogan throughout your forum).
• Highly relevant towards your forum.
• Short and simple.
• Flowing. (Refer to the Pringles Example below)

Some examples include:
Nike - “Just do it”
IFSZ - “Where innovation meets design”
Pringles - “Once you pop, you can’t stop!”

Remember, the first impression on your forum must be memorable and positive. This is how you attract your members.

Good Luck!

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

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Don’t Sit and Watch TV on your backside!

Don’t Sit and Watch TV on your backside!
A weekly routine for forum owners.

Forums/Message boards grow at a rapid rate now a days, some reaching over 200 members a day! A great site which you should visit regulary is Big Boards , they hold the largest forums online. Gaia (a role playing forum) with over 1318923345 posts! Well back to the point, forums are so popular today and even replaced the good’oh chatrooms because when a member leaves the room, their messages disappear which disrupts conversations etc. While forums save the message(s) and allows topic discussions 24/7.

But to keep up with all these changes, rapid growth on the internet and the extremely intense competition with other forums, you will be needing to make daily/weekly advertising routines. With some basic (free) advertisement made daily or weekly, your forum will receive the traffic it deserves. (Depending on how well you execute the following tips).

Search Engines & Directories
A great way to improve traffic would be to submit to search engines. But to improve your search rankings would involve increasing the number of links pointing towards your forum. The size of the directory does not matter, even submit to small ones because theres a higher chance your link will be submitted, while large directories will have to go through a large list of spam links. So i recommend 1 directory and 1 search engine every week.

Link Exchanges/Affiliates
This is a top notch, simple but effective way to improve your forums traffic. Do not waste your time affiliating or link exchanging with forums which are not based around your topic, aim at exchanging with forums which are based around the same topic as you. Eg. Gaming etc.

And never forget, if it is a link exchange, make the most if it. Use highly convincing anchor text which will draw as many clicks as possible. If your making an banner affiliate exchange, design a extremely, eye catching button.

Lets say 1 exchange a week? If you can keep up with that rate consistently, i promise there will be a significant improvement in your activity.

Signatures
Signature advertising, one of the best form of advertisements thought of? Highly effective and its FREE! Alright, why is it such a wonderful tool? You can target your audience by advertising on a specific forum(s) which relate to yours (eg. Gaming, Webmaster etc). Depending on how effective your sig. advert. is, you will definitely gain numerous click-throughs. Visit my Effective Signature Advertising article for a better understanding on how to maxmize the click through rate. I highly recommend any forum owner to signature advertise daily. The only reason why my forum became so active (Known as Admin Chat) was because of how much i sig. advertised it. If you find it a lot of work, just make 1-5 posts a day at a range of 5-7 different, related forums.

Post Exchanges (Moderate)
Not much of an advertisement technique but you can by implementing a signature advert when you exchange posts with another forum. This form of exchange improves your forum activity by purposely requesting a member of another forum to post at yours while you return the favor as well. When your posting on the other forum, the quality of the topic reflects on what type of person you are. If you can create some amazing, interesting topics, members will look at you differently and may wonder what is hidden behind that link of yours. Lets say, 10 exchange posts made a week.

Spam, A BIG NO! NO!
Alright, let me tell you now, Spamming is a big No! No! Never spam! All it does is bring a bad reputation towards your forum. And may also result in spam-attacks at your forum.

Well i hope this simple article is helpful. Remember, advertise your forum regularly, don’t be lazy or your forum will slowly erode away.

Good Luck and Happy Reading my friend.

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

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!