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Eve Support Community Forums Resources Community Management The only true way to get members at your board who will keep coming back
Eve Support Community Forums Resources Community Management The only true way to get members at your board who will keep coming backPage 1 2
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Groupee Member |
I've tried many different ways of getting people to my boards.
I tried spam, but the only thing that got me was an entire message board devoted to insulting me. I listed my site in search engines, but most people that find your site through a search engine are looking for a specific thing, and do not want to join your community. It doesn't matter how many hits you get, or how many members you get, if they don't post. It's better to have 50 active members than 2,000 inactive ones. So here is what I think is the only surefire way to get active members: 1. start going to other message boards that .have similiar themes to yours. Post a lot, be nice, be likable, and make many, many, intelligent posts. Eventually people will come to respect you. 2. start talking to these people on Instant Messengers like AIM. Get friendly with all of these people. If you followed step one correctly, you could have hundreds of people who think you're cool. 3. Now that you're popular and have all these friends, all you have to do is tell them, whether though email or an instant messenger, about your site. Since they already know you, they will probably go to the site and register, and come back often. Also, since they came from other message boards, and you would have multiple people from each message board, many of them will already know each other, which encourages hem to talk on your board. 4. Put your site in your sig at these boards where you have developed your "cool" reputation at. Since they already consider you cool, they will automatically consider your site cool, and will visit it and return often. And if they ever lose the url, since it's in your sig at boards that they go to, they can just go to one of your posts there and recover the url. |
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Eve Developer Aspiring Monkey |
From trying to run a community and failing I learned just how hard it is to have members stick around and post a lot. The things that I have found common on most large sites with a lot of active members is this.
1) There site has a theme EX: arstechnica has tons of active users (believe me, I know) and their site is about all things computer. Karaoke Talk, See above, well I think you can guess 2) Updated information/news. Content. For people to want to come back there needs to be something until the community can support itself. By adding news, images, files, you are adding content to get people interested in your site. By updating this content periodically you drive peoples want to frequent your site. I was never able to pull it off due to lack of time, and no real content to throw up regularly. The nice thing is that eventually your community will get to a point where you don’t *have* to do this anymore, but if you want it to grow and flourish you should. That is just my observations, and they aren’t even necessarily correct. Just my opinion. Jonmark Weber |
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Groupee Member |
For me personally, I continue to visit a board with intelligent posts that actually have thought behind them. I hate boards with "hey" as a post with 50 graemlins following. In addition, colors actually influence many people. You wouldn't enjoy sitting in an uncomfortable room talking to people as you would in a comfortable one. Try to think of yourself as a user who has no idea where they are or what's going on. Make the topics straight forward, use colors that flow well together, and have members that really contribute and people will always come back.
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Groupee Member |
While Xizer's suggestions may be effective (there are people in this community doing that very thing now!), it feels a bit deceptive and dishonest to me. Call me old fashioned, but I'm happy to compete for members out in the open and for all to see. There are plenty of people and just about as many interests out there. If you invest in making your community and site interesting, interactive, and dynamic then you should be able to both attract and retain members.
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quote: I don't feel it's deceptive and dishonest just as long as you are still active in the original community from which you tried to obtain new members. WDFA Dude aka Scott Roberts |
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Groupee Member |
wdfadude - agreed. My read of the suggestions was that they seemed more "predatory" in nature than not though. I'd much prefer to grow great communities all over the Internet, than have sites pirate members from each other.
Do you have thoughts about tactics that have worked for you? |
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| <natalia>
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I think it's important to realize though that sometimes you may meet other people more easily via an online collaboration tool such as a message board. Often new professional or friendship based relationships and newfound interests can be found more easily on message boards than many other online mediums, so it can be a natural progression. Plus, I strongly agree with wdfadude that it's hardly deceptive if you and your members remain active within the community that you originated from.
~Natalia |
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Groupee Newbie |
Just do not know how to keep people from posting too much...
Our board http://www.drugbuyers.com (prescription drugs) |
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| <natalia>
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Esteban,
Do you mean you have too many members posting too often or the same people posting over and over again? Why is this a problem.. do you feel it clutters your board? |
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| <Isolator>
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My problem of late is spammers, my members like images so you can imagine the kind of stuff I have to remove.
Chris |
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Groupee Member |
What happens when you have a board that's established, you have a good set of original members from both where you live and other places (who are also members of other boards I frequent), yet, you seem to be in a lull? Any ideas on how to escape from that? If you want to see situation we're in, go to the link in my sig. We've got 90 members, about 25-30 of whom post with any frequence. Board has been around since June 2001.
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I guess you'll have to find an interesting topic and bring it up, hoping that they participate. You may even have to have phantom discussions with yourself
 to give it a kick-start.Doug |
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| <natalia>
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I agree with Doug! Kick start some conversations. Pick some topics that are relevant to your community members and that you think might spark their interest and go for it! You can even email topics to members that you think would be most interested. Also, make sure your precense on the board is felt, so your community knows at least one person is listening to what they have to say!
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 Groupee Guide |
Doug and Natalia are right on! You might even try a game or something - it's amazing how people can get involved in a posting game, and they'll keep coming back to see whats happened in the game since they left. . .
Kate Sloan "Barn's burnt down, now I can see the moon." - Masahide |
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Groupee Member |
Hmm...good ideas, all of them...*stalks off to start experimenting*
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Groupee Member |
No mention made so far of choosing the right moderators. By spreading the responsibilities over a dozen or so people, they each have a vested interest in sparking activity in their Forums.
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Groupee Newbie |
The first post is very true! But, instead of working this from being a new member and getting respect and comfort on similar sites, you can also be a key contributing member on an existing site, gather with a group of other key members, and start your own site.
That is what we did. Our Administrators and Moderators were the backbone of another site, and that site started to annoy us and the owners let the server problems go all to hell and didn't seem to care about us anymore. So, we took all the knowledgable experts and started our own thing. Two months online so far, and 2500 members, most of whom are active. We also average over 400,000 hits per day now! We also have several paying sponsors who knew where to go when we moved. Oh yeah, color DOES affect repeat customers. Our site is pretty patriotic and has nice buttons and ad banners. We like how it looks, and obviously so do our members. Tony Administrator, LS1Tech.com |
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Groupee Member |
For me, the number one thing that has attracted, activated, and reatined members has been a group of caring and knowledgeable moderators. It has to be more than one person. After I built a group of three of us, I honored some individuals by asking them to be on a "welcome wagon" where they send a private message to each new member and help them get acquainted.
Another tip is to create a "Newcomer's Posting Guide" that helps newbies navigate and "Make Your First Post." From time to time, I give away free books. I also send all of my members a copy of my email newsletter, and I feature cool threads/discussions in each issue (that is a HUGE bonus to get people to read and reply). Also agree with "content" and "theme" as two fundamental propositions... ElderCare Online: The Internet Community of Elder Caregivers |
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Thank you eldercare for sharing these great ideas. It can be very frustrating when you're getting a new community off the ground. Having moderators send email directly to new users is such a thoughtful approach, I can really see that working. I know there were many times out on other boards I'd wished they'd done that for me as a newbie!
This is a great quote: quote: Well said! Amanda |
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Eve For Enterprise Eve Support Community Forums Resources Community Management The only true way to get members at your board who will keep coming back
Eve Support Community Forums Resources Community Management The only true way to get members at your board who will keep coming back