Forums: How DO You Get People to Post!?
Running a web forum is no easy task. If you own one, you know how labor-intensive it is. You spent hours perfecting your forum. You thought up dozens of categories and topics. You customized the interface, set user permissions, sent out welcome emails. Tons of members signed up and logged in. Time for the payoff, right? Wrong. People log in to your forum daily, yet no one posts. Why? 1. People are lazy. They'd rather be entertained than contribute.
2. People feel shy. They're afraid of saying the wrong thing or initiating a conversation. Don't get discouraged because nothing's happening on your website forum. The time has come to take matters into your own hands. How? You're going to have to do some marauding as other people. "What? Sneak around and pretend to be a random forum poster?" YES. As an experiment, I set up a posting forum "just to see what would happen." I chose to make it a rant and rave forum; everybody's got something to complain or cheer about, right? It took me the entire Memorial Day weekend, minus time out for evening social events, to set this thing up. Within two weeks of putting it out there, I had ninety members. NINETY! That's a pretty decent-sized group. You'd think there would be lots of chatter, right? No! No chatter. Out of ninety, want to know how many people took the time to post? FOUR. One of them was a friend of mine, who I begged to help me out... and even she only posted twice. So, that was when I committed the dastardly deed. I began logging in as other people, posting fake stories and perspectives. This got confusing after a while. Was Jenny the all-lowercase poster, or the girl with bad grammar? Was I logged in as Joe D., but telling stories from some girl named Mitsy's perspective again? It didn't matter that much, as this was only a test anyway. But it did work. Once I got the conversational ball rolling, other people joined in. I even had to be controversial, pass some remarks that would incite people emotionally and jar them to action. That got folks posting as well. Here's a related story, but with an unfortunate ending. A girlfriend of mine joined an online group of adoptive moms. The forum leader, an experienced adoptive mother herself, generously offered an information exchange forum where all the moms could converge and discuss. A few months in, members noticed some weirdness on the forum, so they went snooping. What they learned was that the forum leader had multiple forum personalities! She would log in as one person, ask a question, log back in as herself, then answer it. All hell broke loose. A mass of email back-and-forths ensued. The forum leader cracked under the accusations and started spamming every member, begging for forgiveness. It was utter pandemonium. My friend relayed the scandal to me. "That's so dishonest!" she said of the marauding forum leader. Dishonest? Well, maybe a little sneaky, yes. But in rating Shameful and Admonishable Networking Behaviors on a scale of 1 to 10, how much of a sin is it to incite constructive discussions for the betterment of a group? When you consider that, 1. the woman wasn't being paid, and 2. she only wanted to help other moms along in the confusing process, it really wasn't such a terrible thing that she did. I pointed out to my friend that this lady had smartly tapped into a marketing and communication tactic that's widely used and really works. Who do you think sought advice from Erma Bombeck, Dear Abby and Emily Post before they ran well-known columns? No one did... because no one new who they were yet! So with each new release of their respective publications, internal writers had to pretend to be advice seekers, fabricate dilemmas, and then solve them. Now, if your public forum is clearly a conversational hot spot, yet you're still logging in as five different people because "you're becoming attached"... well, I'd say that's a problem. Consider getting out more. But if things are totally stagnant on your forum, this is really your only alternative to get it going. I know a woman on one Ryze forum who asks nearly every day, "Why aren't you guys posting?" No one ever answers her. That's because she's not giving anyone an incentive. That incentive must be emotional, and it must come in the form of riveting conversation. If there isn't any existing conversation, well, you're just going to have to invent some. I wish I knew that adoptive mom with all of her imaginary forum friends. Because if I did, I would tell her, "Hey! You did a good thing." Who knows, I might even have hired her to run my web forum. Copyright 2005 Dina Giolitto. All rights reserved. Find out how crisp, targeted copywriting can make a world of difference for your business. Dina Giolitto is a Copywriting Consultant with ten years of experience. Visit http://Wordfeeder.com for free tips on branding, copywriting, marketing and more.
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Promoting in Online Forums
Forums can be a useful tool if you`re doing business online. You can learn a lot by reading the content and actively taking part in the discussions. Reading a forum's archives can be a great way to get a basic knowledge about a topic, and it can also give you pointers about the changes in trends and opinions through time. It is always very important to read the terms and conditions of each particular forum for a basic guideline as to what is acceptable. It`s also a good idea to read archived posts in order to see the guidelines in action. If you don`t, you could end up doing something wrong, like spamming the forum, and that could seriously hurt both your name and your business. Taking an active part in forums can help you gain recognition in topics you show some knowledge of, and may even result in some great business leads and contacts. Read through posts, and answer any questions you are able to in a polite, friendly and helpful manner. It`s a brilliant way to get your name and services known, but you have to be aware that different forums have different rules in regards to self-promotion. Some won`t allow any hint of self-promotion, some are specifically aimed at self-promotion, and a lot of them fall somewhere in between, allowing either signature files or URL's to an off-the-page member profile. The in-between ones are the best ones to use for marketing yourself, especially as the ones aimed at promoting usually end up more like "spam boards" than anything else. See if you can choose forums that allow a sig file, which is basically a short block of text about you and/or your services which can be automatically attached to the end of every post you make. No matter what you do, never EVER post a reply to a 'legitimate' topic with nothing but spam in the body of your post. This will annoy forum members who are seeking valid answers, and kill your credibility as an online marketer almost instantly. "Netiquette" is a must-have if you`re planning to use forums. What is netiquette, you ask? Basically the same as offline etiquette. It is essential to have a good understanding of acceptable ways to communicate with other forum members. That`s why it`s so important to do a LOT of reading in the forums before you start posting messages yourself. This is where good moderators come into play. They check the forums for inappropriate posts and spam, they keep the boards clean, and make sure everybody plays by the rules. Forums without moderators tend to turn into ghost-towns, with nothing but spam bots visiting them. A nice clean board needs good moderators to keep it that way. In the worst-case scenario, if you break the rules in a forum, by maybe spamming, or using inappropriate language or behaviour, either the administrators or moderators may well end up banning you from that particular forum. If that happens, they will most likely delete each and every post you`ve made, whether it`s good or bad. Happy Visiting and Posting.
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