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Make_Your_Forum_Alive
| 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-Ed
itor.html
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