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Make Your Forum Alive
Is it worth adding a forum to your site? How can it become popular with targeted users? These are the question that almost every more or less experienced webmaster asks after getting some experience with the World Wide Web.
Definition
There are so many answers to these questions…Though I can assume that all the answers can be simplified to two basic answers: “Yes” and “No”. Really opposite, isn’t it? Why so? I can guess that the answer you give depends on the experience you gain.
Let us try to get an objective answer and let us start with the definition. Well, what is a forum?
Britannica says:
in Roman cities in antiquity, multipurpose, centrally located open area that was surrounded by public buildings and colonnades and that served as a public gathering place
What are the keywords here? Multipurpose, open, public gathering place. On the Web public gathering places are used to generate a huge amount of traffic…Hmmm…Traffic is a magic word for any webmaster. What is all the noise about? Ah, it’s just you crying…
-I want a Forum on my Site!
-Stop. Wait a minute. We have a definition only and know nothing about the other features of this Roman relic, which managed to get the second wind with the appearance of the World Wide Web.
Forum Features or What I Can Gain With It
Let’s clarify this.
Traffic is not only a useful feature but also one of the most important. Traffic on the Internet can be easily converted to anything you want… additional earnings in most cases. We are all rather materialistic, ah?
What does a forum actually do? It just makes visible the traffic the site already has, makes this traffic stronger by allowing some sort of interactivity. If a simple site (by the way, I haven’t seen such sites for a very long time) can be compared to a monologue, a site with some feedback forms – a dialogue, then a site with a forum implemented is a fully operating discussion. The tangible appearance of the community which already exists – this is what the launching of a forum is.
Let your permanent visitors talk not only to you but to each other. Establishing a place of communication – putting into life the basic idea of the Internet, isn’t it really great and inspiring? And it’s rather profitable, by the way… Though before you start counting your earnings from the ad space of the forum pages, I think you should put some efforts into breathing life into it; in other words, you should promote it and make it really popular.
Another feature of the forum is that it will allow you to be always informed on the thoughts of your website visitors. And you won’t need to make any kind of surveys or polls – just look through fresh posts every day.
An easily spoiled and almost impossible to restore reputation is of great importance within the commercial world. How can a forum be of help with this? It’s easy. Any Internet user looks not for products only but for living support and probably product community as well. The place where he will be able to discuss all topics of interest related to the product with both a support team and other customers. A living forum is the best evidence of the company’s prosperity.
Search Engine Rankings can also be improved with a good forum. As a forum unites your target audience, whose members share the same interests, it is logical to assume that all the posts of your forum members will relate to your keywords in some way. This will stimulate Search Engine Spiders to improve the rankings of your site. Should I explain why it is good?
Forum Promotion Basics
The best and the worst thing about a forum is that a true forum lives its own life with a minimum of external interference. Indeed, it is best when the forum is a living community, though admittedly when it’s only a starting community, it is one of the most efforts taking and exhausting of things.
When should you start building a community with your forum? A long time before you actually launch your forum. Why? A forum – is only a place surrounded with colonnades in Roman times and with some links in the present time of the World Wide Web. People are the Lego breaks of the community, not their armchairs.
How to start community building? Enter some! I suggest that you are a member of the community already, and if not, that you join immediately! Don’t know what to discuss there? Just share your
idea of adding the forum to your site. Ask questions. Try to give answers, gain some reputation with the community make some acquaintances or maybe even friends. All these contacts can be of great help to you when you will launch your own forum, as they may be interested in supporting you, especially if you are a friend of theirs.
Once you’ve launched the forum, invite people to join it not only through your site news section but through your newsletter as well. Make some posts with the forums of which you are a member already. Maybe some of your acquaintances will join your forum and will share the thankless work of promoting it and making it popular.
Ask your friends for support. Let them post announcements about the launch of your forum on their sites. Later on they may be interested in linking to your forum or to some posts within your forum.
Try to be a strong and charismatic leader. You are a person who is supposed to unite people. Make several new posts every day but never post for posting sake only. Your posts should be interesting and up to date. Your answers should be polite, useful and informative… though I suspect that you will learn all this by the time your forum will have been launched.
Distinguish community groups. With any forum there are usually several types of members. Some are more active than others, are probably shy or do not feel inspired enough to make some posts. This is the problem that, as admin of the forum, you should visualize every member of the community and stimulate every person to be more active if your aim is to make a live forum on your site, not to display its existence only.
The simplest way to involve the maximum number of members in some sort of discussion is to start a poll on your forum on some actual and communication inspiring topic. Let every member share his opinion. To make the poll noticeable put some sort of an announcement on the index page of the site. You may include some poll results in the announcement to make it more provoking.
Well, these are the basic things you should do to make the forum breathe. Yet breathing does not mean living – it’s just the first sign of it. Don’t fool yourself with this sign and don’t think that the forum is ready to escape from your trusteeship.
At this time the forum will become rather big and will take more of your time to moderate it. This is the best moment to encourage the forum most active members offering them to do moderator work with some sections of your forum. Unload yourself and stimulate the other, though you should be very careful with moderator offer. The work does not require some special feature but a person offered should be reliable, polite, and a specialist in the field. Do not make a mistake with new moderators as such a mistake may spoil all your efforts on vivifying the forum.
Mistakes
Do not start with lots of topics. It’s better to start with the field you feel sure about only. A little bit later when experts from other fields join your forum, you will add some other threads. But do not hurry with it so as not to leave some posts unanswered. That is the worst thing that can happen to a forum.
Do not create several accounts of your own trying to create the illusion that the community already exists. Your pen will be detected sooner or later and this may cause a total crash of all your efforts. Behave yourself gingerly with other forums; do not promote yours in an open manner. Such posts will probably be deleted and you will get nothing but a spoiled reputation.
Try to use hint promotion; while answering some questions make some links to your site and to some posts on your forum. In case the posts on your forum are of some real help to your posts on other forums, they will probably not be deleted and you will manage to attract some new members.
Conclusion
It’s of no use to argue that a working and living forum is of great value to any site; though before starting you should be aware that it will take lots of your time and efforts to make it popular and living with its own life. Ready to try it? Go for it! And good luck to you.
About the Author
Igor Lognikov - editor at Web Design Library. One stop resource for web designers and web masters with 1000+ tutorials, fresh articles, and fried news.
http://webdesign.templatemonster.com/AboutAuthor-Igor-Lognikov-Editor.html
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