Community Building Articles
Seeding a new community
Righto, so you knocked together a discussion forum and now you need to get people posting?
No problem! This article will look at some tips and tricks you can use to seed your forum to get it started.
"Introduce Yourself" - it's always good to have a forum dedicated for new members to drop by and say "hi" and tell everyone about themselves. It may be more effective in some industries than it is in others, but nonetheless, it's a good way to get the ball rolling.
Fake posts - people don't post in an empty forum so you need to populate your new community. Until things get moving, you should be registering a new user each day (at least) and make a few posts as that user each day. You want to be answering current threads as well as starting new ones - a combination of general subject areas to encourage discussion and specific questions that can be answered by your forum "experts". As your community develops, you will no longer need to continue doing this.
Post Exchanges - there are some sites that offer post exchange forums - you can meet other forum admins and post on each other's forums to get things moving. These generally offer a low quality of post though.
URL Dropping - if you are a member of existing communities, you may want to consider promoting your new forum there. Keep in mind though some would see it as a friendly request - others would see it as spam! Please be aware of the forum's rules before your start dropping your URL. If the forum allows signatures then this can be a good place to leave your URL.
Contacts - if you know people involved in the subject area, then asking them to participate (even only to begin with) can offer a great deal of help to the new forum admin. Even if your contacts don't know much about the subject area, they can still help by posting newbie questions!
Probing Questions and Polls
- what do you think about...? It's all very well having in depth discussions
but if your users see an empty forum, they still won't post. But offering
them a way to start off their posting career with you can help push them
over the edge from being a lurker to being a poster! It's also a good
way to get feedback on your new site!
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More Community Building Articles
- Dealing with forum spammers
- Seeding an online community
- Types of forum members
- Types of forum spammers
- When to moderate your forum
