MESKOS Forum Development Blog

Successful Forum Tips

Successful Forum Tips
Here are some additional tips on developing a successful forum. These tips do not guarantee a successful forum, it all depends on how well you integrate them into your community.

• Make sure you know your topic. Do not create a forum which you don’t know much about. Don’t leave topics or discussions empty, Google for answers if needed. I’m not saying you need to know everything about the topic, know enough to create discussions, join in etc.
• Unique hacks and features. Many forums are successful due to its unique features. Additional hacks and mods for a forum can really bring a new atmosphere to the community and may even spike new interests from the members. Such as: Currency (money), banks, stores etc really boost up activity.
• Not too many topics. (In response to my Establishment Tip entry). Yes, do have topics when you open your forum but don’t have pages of them and left empty. The fewer the topics the better because it will condense your content and appear more active.
• Affiliates. Affiliates are highly useful for new forums. Affiliate with related forums to build up your member base and name. Don’t affiliate with forums which have relevance to you or your wasting your traffic.

Good Luck again everyone.

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.

Tags: creating, forum, successful, tips

Establishment Tips

Establishment Tips
A few useful tips to take into consideration and practice when opening your forum.

Yes, this is a blog, which means the tips/points are from my perspective and my opinion.

• Do you have the time and effort to sustain a successful forum?
• Will you have the funds to purchase sufficient investments for your forum? (Even though finance is not needed for a forum (if your using a free forum software) but it is quite useful when advertising your message board.
• Do you have the sufficient skills in forum management to take up informational, decisional and interpersonal roles as an admin?
• If you don’t have the sufficient skills, will you consider a partnership with a friend which you can share the work load and different roles of an administrator.

Those were just some general questions you should honestly answer yourself.

Lets begin on the successful forum opening tips:

• Always have topics opened when opening a forum. How?
  » Register multiple accounts and start posting topics in every forum. This is to encourage members to interact within the forum.
  » Gather a few friends to start topics and reply to them.
  The purpose of this technique is to eliminate the idea of the forum being empty/isolated or un-active. Remember! don’t open ‘lame’ topics, make them interesting.
• Have a competition/contest when you open your forum. Why? This will motivate members in interacting with the forum and other members. Some ideas may include: Posting Contest, Referral, Writing Contest, Designing Contest etc. (Try to develop some unique ideas yourself).
• Appealing Appearance. An essential. Your forum appearance must ‘WOW’ the visitors. If you have poor look, who will register? so remember, always have a A+ skin/theme/design.

I hope this short article will help you on a successful forum opening.
If you have any queries or questions, please reply to this entry and i’ll do my best to help you out.

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.

Tags: establishment, forum, help, opening, success, tips