Promoting Community Participation

[kelendria]

^ I have exactly the same problem, no comps ever interest my folks either.
Even things like member colour changes, post count & 'karma point' awards go unappreciated.
I update my forum every single day & I find it annoying that I see people going to a dead forum & still posting there regularly.
I know it's quality over quantity but I'm running out of ideas to keep my forum active.
I have just about everything covered as far as topics & stuff
I don't get feedback either so it's hard to find out what I'm doing wrong or right as far as topics etc.
Like you also, I added a chat thing & it's still there, but there's really no point having it when the activity is barely on the forum
I completely sympathise, I've had my forum for 3 years!

[Gamoc]

Well, what you want to do is find one member. One member is all you need to start, and ask them. Once you've gotten another member, then ask them and keep on going until you've gotten enough members to start a thread for it. Continue to encourage community participation by starting new threads and making competitions. Try removing some of the codes, they might be slowing down your forum and driving members away. Don't give into things like "Make me staff and I'll be active"...that just makes it worse. They'll tell others how they got it, then you'll probably get more members who ask for that and then you have more than half of your members as staff. You want to do it subtly, encourage thread making more and all that. You also never want to "bug" the members either. That'll promote them to leave or come on and not check anything. I hate it when admins just continue bugging me over and over again and send me four or five PMs for every PM I reply. Yeah, that can be annoying.

[Zath]

Jan 5, 2008 6:37:03 GMT -8 @kelendria said:

^ I have exactly the same problem, no comps ever interest my folks either.
Even things like member colour changes, post count & 'karma point' awards go unappreciated.
I update my forum every single day & I find it annoying that I see people going to a dead forum & still posting there regularly.
I know it's quality over quantity but I'm running out of ideas to keep my forum active.
I have just about everything covered as far as topics & stuff
I don't get feedback either so it's hard to find out what I'm doing wrong or right as far as topics etc.
Like you also, I added a chat thing & it's still there, but there's really no point having it when the activity is barely on the forum
I completely sympathise, I've had my forum for 3 years!

You have over 2000 members. I'd say that was good going.
I'm pulling my hair out at less than 80 on one my Feeblegirl boards.

[Karen]

We have numerous ways for our members to interact with each other. Predominantly would be the two roleplay areas, open and what we call paperback. We also have several contests, some of which include roleplay areas for the members' "characters" in the contest to interact. We offer writings contests, graphic design contests where members make ads for the forum, a weekly themed signature and avatar contest, Create-a-Caption, poetry, a contest for the header/banner, forum mascot, comics for the newsletter, Spot-the-Difference, and just recently we added contests for those enrolled in roleplay. Just to name a few.

We've had fantastic luck with our "Suggestions/Feedback" board where members suggest an idea or contest. We've used several of their ideas. It helps I think to give the members a sense of ownership of the site.

But that's not all we do to encourage community interaction. We also have "special boards" that members can join, such as Secret Pals. On this board members pay simoleans (or karma) to access the password protected board where they post their likes/dislikes, etc. Then they are paired up with another member anonymously. For a month's time they "spoil" their Secret Pal by sending them eCards, avatars, signatures, wallpapers, simoleans, gifts, etc. At the end of the month, everyone is revealed. It's quite popular, and it often results in lasting friendships.

Other popular special boards include Cupid's Crush, where members discuss relationships, Friends and Friendship board, where members are again paired up with another member, only this time it's not anonymous, and they're paired with someone they have never met. Different activities ensue to encourage getting to know each other. And lastly, we have a Harry Potter board, among a few others. All of these boards are held on a rotating basis, never more than one at a time.

We also offer a board where members can post their poetry, writing, drawing, or anything else they'd just like to show off for others to enjoy.

Some other things we do to get community interaction is the General Chat board which includes several sub-boards for games, discussion on movies, books and one specifically for the popular series of books called Twilight.

Something new that's just starting is a team of members that greet new members and direct them to areas on the board that they should visit, like the rules, introduction thread, etc. They also take these new members under their wing and try to help them not feel so lost on such a big forum. We call them the Link Crew. Just a few ideas that I hope are helpful.

If anyone has questions or would like more detailed information on how any of these ideas work, feel free to send me a PM.

[kelendria]

Jan 6, 2008 12:33:53 GMT -8 Zath said:

Jan 5, 2008 6:37:03 GMT -8 @kelendria said:

^ I have exactly the same problem, no comps ever interest my folks either.
Even things like member colour changes, post count & 'karma point' awards go unappreciated.
I update my forum every single day & I find it annoying that I see people going to a dead forum & still posting there regularly.
I know it's quality over quantity but I'm running out of ideas to keep my forum active.
I have just about everything covered as far as topics & stuff
I don't get feedback either so it's hard to find out what I'm doing wrong or right as far as topics etc.
Like you also, I added a chat thing & it's still there, but there's really no point having it when the activity is barely on the forum
I completely sympathise, I've had my forum for 3 years!

You have over 2000 members. I'd say that was good going.
I'm pulling my hair out at less than 80 on one my Feeblegirl boards.

Thank you for joining us!
Yes 2000 is good & I am grateful don't get me wrong, but it's hard when only some of them are actually active!

Responding to the person above; I have a music/general forum & I've tried sports boards, media (people get greedy), & a secret board among other things, but I often don't know what to give people in hidden access that other people don't have.
I also had (& I guess still do) a suggestions & problems board (I had it open for guests but it got spammed) but as said before I get hardly any feedback!
This could be seen in one way that there's nothing wrong with our board, but nobody is perfect & I often ask myself why it is people don't hang around for long when we cover such a wide variety of topics
I expand & decrease the number of my boards with activity & have had up to 25, but there's no point in having loads of boards if all there is is me filling them in

[pandacat]

I love this thread..and have been trying to promote participation from the 'lurker' members...and others that don't post as much or often...

I am interested in finding out more about the 'scavenger hunts' mentioned here...and also to find out how to 'hide' things on the forum (ie the 'easter egg hunt' mentioned earlier in the thread)

One thing I did that was successful was I took a photo of the house from the movie 'Groundhog Day' (which was filmed near me) and posted it and had people guess which movie it was from...it got lots of action...and I'd drop a hint here and there...until someone finally got it. It was fun...and entertaining to see the answers. Unfortunately, there aren't always movies filmed near everyone...so it's not an idea for all admins...but possibly some.

We've done the ABC games...those get old...

I have a section for 'fun and useful links' where people can post household tips and natural remedies, etc...but those get stale after awhile...

[Jack]

I found this a very interesting discussion to read..

I find that some people don't appreciate competitions, even if it's got a reward. Recently a forum that I'm part of, a small community hosted a competition to see who could get to a certain level on one of the Flash Games that we've got on the site. I, was the only person to take part, I recieved a reward of 3 months ad-free on my own forum.

I don't understand why people wouldn't want to take part in something like that. In the Rules you didn't even have to officially join the forum, you could just be a guest and play the game, and try and win.

How can competitions work then..

I think the only way for a competition to work is if you've got a 50+ member, active community. Then that way not everyone has to take part, and you've got some real competition.

I guess as a forum Admin you need to find out about your members, their hobbies, their likes, their dislikes and bring in a competition that'll be one they'd all want to do. Otherwise, competitions are useless for your forum.

Deadlines

It needs to be something that can be done in less than an hour.

Have you tried running a competition, but it goes on for ages, and eventually some of the contestants have to log off?

You need to make sure it's around 1 hour in length, unless you know your members have put aside 3 hours for you..

The only exception to this, is if it's a Writing competition, or a Banner competition etc. People can spend 1 hour on it if they want, but they could also spend a week on it.

Remember..

Deadlines are important.
Suitability for the forum is important.
Member count is important.

[veggiegirl]

I find offering a 'Custom Title' after achieving 1,000 posts has created interest on my board

[Enchant]

Apr 11, 2008 6:29:22 GMT -8 @veggiegirl said:

I find offering a 'Custom Title' after achieving 1,000 posts has created interest on my board

Please make sure that in the future you limit your post to a max of 4 sentences. This is for discussions not for comments, tel about your experiences before or after deciding to to that. Perhaps, inform us as to how it is going and how you got members to actually participate in them. Thank you

[veggiegirl]

okay.. I find that members are trying to achieve the 1,000 post requirement in order to be able to select a custom title.

I give them the opportunity to change the title at any time. They, of course, will have to PM me since nobody else can modify a member's profile.

Thus far, the idea seems to be working.

[Princexx]

Something that I've found that works for my forum is having a store. Members can spend their karma on things like stories that people have written, graphics others have made, etc. They have to earn a certain amount of karma for a certain amount of posts, though. Members can pm you the file for the story they want bought, because when someone buys things with their karma, the karma that the people spent goes to the people who wrote the story or made the graphic.