Guide – How I made a successful and thriving forum

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[Gosu71]

Part 1

Step 1 - Get the people before the forum is made

I spent over 6 months being a member of a very large ‘Official’ game forum.  As time went by I got increasingly unhappy with the way the moderators run the site, I also noticed I wasn’t the only one. I was a well respected member of the community and with this in mind, I decided I’d make my own forum and take with me all the best people for what I needed.

The point I’m making here is this - I’d now got a user base of potential people to join my as yet uncreated and untitled forum. Most people make a forum and then expect it to become populated as if by magic, which doesn’t happen. People spend ages making a good looking site and then get no members. My advice is to get or target the people you want and then make the forum.

Step 2 - Make the forum

I very quickly used a standard template, added a few forums to it and gave it a name. It took me 10 minutes to do and I was happy with it. I decided that if the forum took off and became popular, I’d add all the fancy bells and whistles at a later date.

I sent 15 pm’s to the people I wanted on the ‘Official’ forum and told them I’d made my own forum. It was going to be a forum by the people for the people. Within a couple of days I had over 50 members signed up to my bog standard forum and most of them had joined through word of mouth.

The point I’m making here is this – You don’t need to spend a long time making a fancy looking forum for it to become populated. If you follow the first step then the people will come. You can make improvements to your forums looks at a later date.

Step 3 - A forum for the people by the people

To make everyone happy and feel involved with the running of the forum, I made carefully selected choices for moderators. From step 1, I knew the people I wanted and I knew all about them. The ones who should have been moderators on the ‘Official’ forum but never were were made moderators on my forum. The idea behind this was simple, I wanted to give them what they wanted and knew they would stay and become a regular on my forum.


I will post part 2 once i've written it out and show the importance of affiliate sites, getting 'known' on other sites, Twitter and various other great tips that will make your forum into a thriving and popular community. I will also show you the pro and cons of having a chat box and how they affect your forum.
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http://modernwarfare2.myfanforum.org
THE Modern Warfare 2 forum

[admin (no pm's please)]

All very good points.

Point 1 tends to be key, and there is only one exception to it.

The exception is if you make a forum that targets a very distinct niche that no one else is targeting and work your butt off in populating that forum with information on that niche, and then work your butt off getting links to that forum from other sites, so that people can find you.

In neither case do you need to do more work on the looks of your forum other than changing the logo.
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[Leedsforever]

thanks for the tips..

We now have 72 members however about 15 that havent posted at all... and about the same again who have only posted once or twice.

We have sent out a newsletter to all members in the hope to prompt them back, so far only 1 has taken that bait! We are also on twitter and facebook, but will be interested in your points with twitter as at the moment Im just following loads of ppl in the hope to get recognised. And dont think its working  
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http://minime.myfunforum.org/index.php

[admin (no pm's please)]

Well you have done the work on making the forum look good, and in this case I would almost say it is an exception to the rule about the work not mattering that much.

But you are picking a hard target, why is your weight loss forum the one to join? Maybe you should pick a niche within that area?
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[Leedsforever]

[admin (no pm's please)]

There is a distinct lack of the focus needed to get you into a google search. The main page title is the meaningless "mini me" and the main page is a litter of keywords. Just making the title "Mini me - New Mums weight loss forum" would have a big effect. Though lifting a ranking from page 100 to page 50 is still a meaningless exercise! The market may be just too full to get anywhere unless you go for a really small part of it.
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[Leedsforever]

[Gosu71]

[sazzle]

this is great advice, thanks.
Hopefully it will help our forum grow and grow and will give the members we currently have even more support and advice from new members.
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[bazfalty]

Hve to agree with all the points made on here, Luckily I was in the same situation where people were not happy with the way the forum was going under the current mods, and admin so I just set my own up and sent a few PM's on the forum and within a week I'd got over 100 members, now I have over 800.
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http://onlyoldskool.com

[Gosu71]

Part 2

Twitter and how to generate users from it

Twitter has brought me loads of usefull forum contacts, but most importantly it has brought in alot of new forum members.

Anyone can do this regardless of how many 'followers' you have. The secret is in the hashtags (#)

Our forum is a Modern Warfare 2 'first person shooter' gaming forum. Evertime I post a 'Twit' I add onto the end of my message the hashtag #mw2. ALOT of people follow the realtime 'timeline' for this hashtag, so those people are all going to see my 'Twit' which just so happens contains the link to my forum and a message saying check out our forum for the latest MW2 news  . Last time I did this we got our record of 48 users online at the same time.

How can this help your forum?

If for example your forum is music related, you could send a 'Twit' saying "Check out our forum for all the latest music news here - example.myfreeforum.org  #itunes #sony #ipod"  

This 'Twit' would not only go to your followers but ALSO to the large amount of people following the 'live' timelines for the #itunes #ipod etc hashtags.

This really works and can be done by anyone. Even new Twitter users with zero followers as the secret is in the hashtags #.
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THE Modern Warfare 2 forum

[admin (no pm's please)]

An excellent tip? What are the spam issues there though?
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[Gosu71]

Good point raised Admin.

As of now we havn't had any spambots or spam users whatsoever.

I really do think this is a great way to help people get more members and those that do try this out, you will find you will only attract users who are interested in what your forum's theme is.

I have some more tips and tricks which i'll post soon.

On a side note to Admin, our forum is really close to being fully transfered to our new .com host. Is it ok if I stay active on here and try to help people out with hints, tips etc. Ive been here since 2005 and it feels like 'home'  
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THE Modern Warfare 2 forum

[admin (no pm's please)]

of course all help is gratefully accepted.

I meant spam at the twitter end though, presumably this system is open to abuse and controls must be in place.
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[Gosu71]

Here is an example of this in action, with screenshots!

Our forum stats at the time -



My 'Twit' (I shortened the URL as there is a 140 character limit on Twitter messages)



2 minutes later...

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http://modernwarfare2.myfanforum.org
THE Modern Warfare 2 forum