Keeping Your Forum Active

If you have already made it through the challenges of successfully creating your own forum and succeeding to get a fair amount of members to join, then the major part of your battle is over. Your goal now is to keep your members active. This will remain your goal for the rest of the time you run your forum, so you might want to understand the good, bad, and ugly of this process. After all, the one thing that can quickly end your forum is inactive members.

You: The key factor in keeping your forum active is you! Every forum needs leadership who sets the example as to how the members should act. If they see you posting, having a good time, and getting to know the members then they will want to do the same.

You will also find that new members are reluctant to make their own new threads. Instead, they test the waters by lurking and posting on other member's threads. As the leader you want to pull these people in. Show them that it is okay to create new threads by creating threads of your own. Set a goal for yourself to start 3 new threads on every board, every day. Not only does this show that you are involved and show others that it is okay to be involved, but it gives the new guys threads to post on. There will always be something new to talk about if you begin this habit. Soon, you can make less new threads as more members take over some of the work for you.

Ownership: You want your members to feel like your forum belongs to them. There are several ways to do this, but the most important is to ask their opinion. I accomplish this by occasionally giving the members a survey to fill out. You can make questions that serve your forum, but here are a few examples:

What is one thing you love about this forum?

What is one thing you hate about this forum?

Do you find our forum easy to navigate?

What would you like to see in the future of our forum?

What is your favorite board on our forum? Why?

Make sure that when you ask these questions you include the word 'our'.

Also, to make them feel at home on the forum begin coming up with ways to put certain members in the spotlight. Maybe you could have a member of the month and write something up explaining why a person was selected. If your forum has a newsletter, invite members to showcase their work in your newsletter. They could write article or submit art work.

You know you have accomplished the goal of making them feel like your forum is their forum when they begin setting their homepage to your site and starting threads about how much your site feels like a 'second home' to them.

Fun: The whole reason members come to a forum is to chat, make friends, and have fun. Make sure that no matter how serious your forum's topic might be, there is something fun for members to do. A common practice on forums is to have a special board for games, jokes, and other entertaining things. There are many forum games that you can play. To get an idea of what you can do, take a look at other forums that already have a game board set up. Take their ideas and make them fit to your forum.

At the same time, fun is an attitude. If you come off as if you are excited to be there and excited about the forum then members will sense that. Your attitude will rub off on them and spread throughout the community

Changes: Active members want something fresh and new all of the time. Constantly brainstorm with staff about new contests, boards, and community projects that you can add to your site. When things start to feel a little stale, start one of these new projects. Always making changes will make members feel as if they are getting a new prize each time they come to your site.

Friendly: Encourage members to be friendly to each other and make sure that you are always friendly as well. There will be times as a forum leader when certain members make you scream and want to run away. No matter what you must make sure to keep a friendly attitude. Never make rude comments to a member, especially not on the boards. Members will stop coming to your forum and go to a place where they feel they are wanted. It only takes one comment to anger a handful of members. Remember that they are building relationships with each other as the forum grows. You might say something to one member and they tell 10 friends. Those 10 friends tell 10 more friends and before you know it you have 100 people who are angry with you.

The most important thing to remember is that you are creating a place for people to gather and socialize. It needs to be a place where people feel comfortable, know they are wanted, and enjoy spending time at.