How to build an active community

Here's what I have so far for netdesignz 1st origional article! C&C Please

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How to build an active community by David Myers of Net Designz


Today’s webmasters are always striving for new ways of bringing activity and new members to their message board. There are lots of articles out there that will tell you a lot of different ways of achieving your goal, but I’m going to try and sum up everything you need to know with this article.

Before you bring your forum to the public, make sure it looks appealing to the people that your website is targeting. I would recommend you stay away from the default themes, as your forum would end up looking like a lot of the other forums out there. You would want a unique theme that goes along with the kind of website your forum’s going to be on. For instance, if your website was all about computers, you might want a tech feel to the design of your forums.

A mistake most webmasters make when starting out their message board is having too many forums. If you have too many, then your message board won’t look active, and you will lose members because nobody wants to post on a dead forum. I recommend you start with around four to eight forums. That way your message board will seem semi-active. As your message board grows and you gets more and more activity, then you can add more forums.

Another thing you should do before you release your message board to the public is you should make sure that you have plenty of threads. That way new members will have places to post.

It’s a hard project getting an active forum, so here are a few suggestions if you want to start with a bang:

• Have a contest where members can win forum privileges, such as a custom member title, etc., or actual items
• Pay a few people to do a certain amount of posts to get your website active
• Post around at forums and notify people that your forums are up
• You can exchange links with another forum in the same field as yours

And here are some ways to keep your members:

• Give out custom member titles like: Top Poster, Most Improved, etc.
• Keep adding new things to your forums. Most forum software has many mods that you can add to your forums.
• Create a section where members can give comments and critique your forum. It’s a great way to feedback from the members of what you need to improve
• Make sure your forums have a set of guidelines that members have to follow. That helps your members not get out of hand

Now you’re on your way to having an active forum!

This article was brought to you by David Myers of Net Designz
Copyright : You may use this article again on your own site but the content must not be altered in anyway. All links must stay intact and this article cannot be resold, it is free to use with the restritions noted here.

Hope this helps out some new webmasters. 

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Very interesting article digit. Actually it does not have anything new, but it is a great source for people that are in their first steps.

The only thing I am not sure if it is ok is "You can exchange links with another forum in the same field as yours"

I use this technique (as you can see in the top banner of the forum) but there are many pros telling that this not good to do

yeah, I'll fix that up. I meant to say in the same general field as yours but not a website exactly like yours. I'll be adding more things shortly. I'll keep you updated with the changes.

hmm i am thinking about setting up my own community soon, so all this will come in handy,

thanks guys

ps. can anyone recommend a good forum sofware or a good forum host to go with

thanks

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Billy : Check this thread

http://webmasterforum.thetopsites.net/index.php/topic,117.0.html

Nice thread.

Something I will keep is the 'forum privileges' thing.

Very interesting

Good read.  Considering all things, building a forum/community is one of the hardest.

Yeah, I dont agree that you should exchange links with competitors.

You don't really wanna promote people who only want to steal your business.

It's good to pay for advertising on competitors sites though.  I've done that several times and it's worked very well

I use this technique (as you can see in the top banner of the forum) but there are many pros telling that this not good to do

It isn't a bad thing, except I wouldn't recommend a banner right at the top of the page. Also, a little recomindation, especially for new forums, don't crowd your site with ads.

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