Growing your forum is important.
Today, it seems that it is getting harder and harder to grow a forum and come up with new tactics for growth. Forums are still a good way to build niche communities online.
Forum owners often have to rely on outdated and generic strategies to grow communities, but the good news is that there are plenty of fresh strategies to use and boost your membership even more.
1: Leverage Micro-Communities on Reddit and Facebook Groups
Get on Reddit and Facebook Groups and look for your target audience.They’re likely using these giant social communities. Target them by developing a relationship with active contributors. Then you can invite them over to your forum and some point and many may potentially follow them.
Make sure when you’re developing a relationship with these people of Reddit and Facebook, you’re posting value and getting yourself noticed as an expert in your niche.
2: Create a ‘Starter Pack’ for New Members
Onboarding is the best way to retain active members in your community.Have auto-PMs sent with top threads, a custom user guide, and a thoughtful welcome message. Ask a question on the message in an attempt to get them to reply. Once they reply, start developing a relationship with them by keeping the discussion going.
Invite your members to introduce themselves and then happily show them how they can get right into being a part of your community.
3: Gamify with Unexpected Rewards
Try to gamify your community as much as you can.You can customize your posting ranks, for example where when a member hits a certain number of posts, their title changes to a new cool unique name. You can add a bunch of rank titles for them to try to get to. It gamifies your forum and also encourages more posts and growth.
Use a credit system to reward members for posting as they can purchase items, get credit points for different tasks, and you could even hold contests where they win credit prizes.
4: Run a Monthly ‘Member Spotlight’
Run a monthly spotlight to feature different active members in your community.Take your most engaging members and spotlight one of them each month. Point out the strengths they bring to the community and anytime they have helped other members. Give them a special VIP rank that not everyone is able to get.
Spotlighting your active members will show others and them how much you appreciate their contributions to your community.
5: Offer ‘Link Drops’ in Exchange for Introductions
Be generous to members as long as they are generous to you.Many forum members these days have their own forums, blogs, or other websites that they hope to be able to share with the community. Offer them the ability to add it to their signature or a special area on the forum as long as they post an introduction. This encourages them to be active and allows them to promote their link.
As long as the link is not spam or leads to harmful content, it isn’t really going to do your forum any harm by letting them share it.
6: Create a Viral Forum Game or Challenge Thread
Forum and posting games are a great way to keep members active.Not all members have something to post about the niche topic of your forum. Sometimes, they login and can’t think of anything to post and then leave without being active. Forum and posting games can give them a reason to post when they’re uninspired to post on the main niche sections.
Create games like “last person wins” or “count to 10,000” to keep people posting every time they login even if it’s not in the main niche section.
7: Partner with Niche Influencers or Bloggers
Forum owners need to do more collaborations and partnerships in their niche.Social media creators, YouTubers, and bloggers collaborate all the time and in return, they typically get a lot more traffic because of it. Forum owners should be taking advantage of this benefit as well. Reach out to other forums, blogs, social media influencers, and companies within your niche and propose a collaboration with them.
You can do guest posting, guest blogging, post exchanges, and things like that.
8: Make a Public 'Roadmap' Thread for the Forum
You just have a strategic plan for your forum whether it’s a hobby or you want to make money.A plan will help you reach your goals and objectives and grow your forum into something spectacular. You should include your mission and all goals you have for the forum and a roadmap to when you want to hit the goals. You also need to include your members in this so that they know what you want to achieve with your community.
You can even make it more engaging if you give members the ability to vote on new features, suggest new features, and allow them to help shape the future of the community because without them, it isn’t a community after all.
9: Add ‘Reply-to-See’ Premium Threads
Use gated content methods on your forum.You don’t have to require payment to see gated content but instead you can require a certain number of posts or engagement from members. The member has to be at a certain number of posts to see “blank” topic or section. This will encourage activity and will help gamify your forum.
Don’t use this too many times and be sure to remain ethical about it.
10: Turn Your Forum into a Content Engine
Turn your forum into something more than just a generic forum like everyone else has.Create weekly content on your forum. Create a blog post that summarizes the best topics, replies, polls, and user-generated content of the week. Send out newsletters that offer exclusive content and value that you won’t find on the forum. Post more than just normal topics and replies that most forums see each day.
Create social media pages for your forum and share your content on them to cross-promote and get more traffic to your community.
Final Thoughts
Forum growth does require you to be creative and consistent.Think outside of the box and be sure to keep posting and implementing ideas the entire way. Your members need to see an active leader because it will help them remain active. Be willing to experiment and try new things.
What other unique ways of promoting a forum would you add to this article?