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Gathering a Critical Mass of Members to a Forum

To engineer a successful forum, there are three key questions an administrator needs to ask before building the forum.

Goal #1. How will you gather a critical mass of members
Goal #2. What will compel members to provide content
Goal #3. How will the forum survive pass the first year
In this article we cover goal #1 – how to gather a critical mass of members.
Be niche

Your forum has to build a name for itself as the authority on a subject. All successful forums have something that sets them apart from the rest. For example, it could be the unique content of the site, an under-served niche demographic they target, or the personality of the site administrator.

If you’re creating a forum, ask yourself, “What will people get out of my forum that they can’t already get somewhere else?”

All successful forums have a purpose. They exist for a specific reason, to accomplish something. To connect people with common interests, or to facilitate conversation on issues related to the site.

One major reason many new forums fail is because there are too many forums on the same topic! Forums will not be successful if their sole purpose is building traffic for the main website.

Choice of forum software

Getting this right is critical. There is a high probability the existing forum posts will be lost by switching to different software later.

Consider search engine optimisation first. Since 85%+ of new traffic to your website will come from the search engines, having your discussion forum posts found by the search engines is essential.

Before you choose a discussion forum software package, make sure that all the posts within the forum can be found and ranked by the search engines. Most discussion forum software hide messages posts in such a way that they simply cannot be crawled by the search engines.

One way to find out if message posts within a specific forum software package are search engine optimised, is to visit a site using that software, copy a recent forum headline and paste it into Google and do a search (surround the search headline with quotes so Google knows exactly what to look for).

If the message headline comes up within the first 50 pages found by Google, you know the forum has been optimally indexed. If the headline doesn’t show, you might want to look for a different forum software package.

Most of the major forum scripts are geared for SEO, but there are ways to improve results further by adding search engine friendly URLs, or in the case of vBulletin, adding vBSEO (a full suite of SEO enhancements).

Dynamic URLs, session ids, etc. used by most forum software can be very detrimental to the forum health from search engine point of view.

Take care when choosing the type of forum and forum script or software that will be used. The forum should be easy to find and easy to use. Some forum scripts and software come with compulsory ads served from the parent company, and lead to a poor user experience.

Focus content and discussion

Users will sign up and post on your board if they find the existing content interesting, and consider it worthwhile to participate. Establish several interesting categories within your forum, without going overboard.

When launching the site you will not have many members, so keep the content focused on a few discussions only to avoid empty rooms. It is far better to have 4 active sections than 15 empty ones.

Don’t be afraid to lump similar topics together. Once a forum grows to a size where threads are pushed to page 2 and 3, then consider splitting a forum into two smaller ones.

Do not have too many off-topic discussion areas. Instead create one or two introductory discussions, where new users can post about themselves and existing users can welcome them.

Know that before making the forum public, it is a good idea to create maybe two or three threads in each forum area, so visitors will have somewhere to post. Many new forum users are too shy to post new threads on their own.

Function over form

Users care more about the content and community than the design. Image heavy sites have a high first impression, but subsequent low usability. Image rich sites take longer for each member to read threads, make a new post, move between forums etc. If the page refresh is slow, users post less and are less inclined to return. Google and Yahoo are not particularly attractive, but very successful search engines which observed the law of efficient page refresh.

Design should not be the focus, instead improve the user experience with clear and easy to use navigation, few fancy buttons and images and making sure everyone understands the functions of the site. There is no substitute for good form design, consistent branding, clear and readable type and ample white space.

Use hacks, add-ons and features sparingly

Many forum scripts have hundreds of freely available add-ons, for example, vBulletin, including social networking add-ons, live chat, shops and arcades.

The trick here is to employ fewer features, but do them well. Avoid making the mistake of adding so many features they become a visual barrier to new users, or slow existing users’ posting. Add too many features too quickly and you do not allow enough time to measure them, or allow your users to adopt them.

A simple, clean layout with features that promote registration, referral and posting are all that is required.

Super easy registration

Almost all forums have some barrier to entry, to screen out trolling and spam. However, a common mistake among forum administrators is making registration complex.

For example, some forums make you agree to rules, answer security questions, validate your identity via email and await moderator approval. While these measures counter spam, if your signup process is long and tedious, many users will give up. Try to achieve a good balance between security and ease of use.

Apart from making registration hassle-free, offer registrants some kind of benefit to join other than permission to post. These could be freebies or downloads.

Set your barriers to entry to be either large or small. Large will net you fewer members, but quality; small will gain you more users but of mixed quality.

Member referral schemes

Many forums fail due to a lack of publicity. Tell your friends to join, and if they find it interesting, they will tell their friends, who will in turn tell their friends etc. This can tie in very well with a referral scheme, whereby users are rewarded for referring other users to the board. Word-of-mouth advertising, in tandem with other forms of advertising e.g. SEO optimization, Google Ads, link trading with other forums, can result in a powerful combination which will draw more and more users to your forums.

Seeding links in other forums

Get people aware about your forum/site for free, simply by joining other forums and having your link in your forum/profile signature. Emailing sites such requests can attract negative publicity, as recipients may perceive you to desperate spammer.

The best technique is to join another forum. Have a link to your site in your signature, and try to make 10 or so posts each week. If you get a great reputation on the forum, people will check out your link. If you are a credible, it is likely people in those forums will join yours.

Useful forum articles

Forum design
Building content
Long term survival
Anthony Coundouris is a director and digital consultant for the digital marketing agency Firestarter.

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3 Reasons Why Newbie Internet Marketers Should Only Focus On Building A List

Let’s be real here. Newbie Internet marketers have it rough. They come into an industry that is glamorous for promising riches in 30 days or less and they are told they can push a button and let the system do all the work for them. They arepromised lifestyles of sitting on a beach with their laptop running their multi-million dollar empire with nothing but an Internet connection and maybe a phone.Plus, there’s also a lot of bad information out there telling Internet marketers they need to be doing this strategy or that strategy… and ultimately none of them work. The real problem is newbie Internet marketers don’t get told the truth and they don’t get a full understanding of how the ‘big picture’ of Internet marketing really works.Here’s the reality. Succeeding in Internet marketing comes down to 2 basic things… building a list and selling products or services to that list.So what happens after a newbie realizes this is they spend all their time doing one or the other instead of doing both. But here’s the good news. When you’re just starting out, you should only focus on building a list, and that’s it.Here’s why…You don’t need to focus on creating products in the beginning – Until you understand how to create a product, just use ones that are already created. Yes, I’m talking about affiliate products. Pick 3-5 affiliate products that are related to your niche and use those in your emails that you send out to your list.One of the things newbie Internet marketers do is they spend time creating a product, but once it’s done, they don’t have anyone to sell it to. That’s not what you want to do. You always want to have an audience to sell to, thus you should always start with building a list.Relationship marketing always pays more in the long run – As you build your list and you send out emails, make sure the emails are filled with content that provide true value and true insight. Why? Because when you give people good stuff, they will like and trust you. When this happens, they will buy from you time and time again.Think about it. How many products have you bought from people you didn’t know versus people you’ve followed and who you trust? I bet I already know what the answer is.Ask people what they want, and give it to them – Once you’ve built a relationship with your list, ask them what they want to learn about. When they like you and trust you, they’ll tell you what they want to learn. When you find that out, create a product based on what they want to know.Here’s an example. After you ask your list what they want to learn, take every response and organize the questions into a logical order. Use the questions as an outline to your product. Make the product about answering their questions and you’ll give them exactly what they want.As you can see, it’s far more important to build your list first before you create a product so you know exactly what they want to learn.

Small Business Online? Using Affiliate Programs to Make Money Online

Small businesses online are the future of the economy and will most likely play a large part in getting it out of the current recession. With the world going virtual and more of the economy shifting to the internet, each new online small business creates more competition and the possibility of helping the economy get out of the current recession. The shape of the financial world is changing and the ‘nobodies’ of yesteryear are leveling the playing field online.

What exactly is a small business online? Is it the cottage industry of the past or is it the local businesses that go online to create a ‘store front’ on the internet? The answer is neither. An online small business, today, includes the hundreds of thousands of web owners who have blogs, forums, and websites and make money online using their talents, providing their services, and using the various affiliate programs to capture a share of the market.

Online Marketers-? While the traditional small business owner provided only a service; today, a small business owner can market various services and make money online. The service providers have realized the competition online is simply too much. No one company can easily capture a large slice of the market., which is why the service providers work with many affiliate programs simultaneously, providing lucrative percentages to individuals and companies who act as ‘resellers’. This way they are able to capture a large portion of the market without geographical limitations or increasing overheads.

Through becoming an online marketer, any person can become a ‘small business’ owner and create a small business online.

The virtual world provides tens of thousands of opportunities online. Some are scams, some are genuine; and while every article read online has to be taken with a grain of salt, if you read enough and research enough, the best affiliate programs in the business will get your attention. There are names like ClickBank and Commission Junction, which will be repeated over and over again, proving within the realm of fantasy, some reality remains to make money online.

There is no guarantee of success and there are too many variables in the whole scheme of things to allow even the best financial wizards to create predictors of success. Yet, there is so much scope, so much vision, and simply so much opportunity for growth that anyone who does not take advantage lacks the foresight to capitalize.

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