Why is my forum dying?

[4kspaceexplorer]

Maybe try making more ranks.

But seriously, my forum has more than 15 ranks!

[4kspaceexplorer]

Hey, it it fine if I use some your topics in my forum?

[Haimovfids]

Jun 18, 2016 19:27:31 GMT -8 4kspaceexplorer said:

Hey, it it fine if I use some your topics in my forum?

Me?

Use what you'd like. 

[4kspaceexplorer]

Thank you! 

[Pebbles]

May 9, 2016 12:48:20 GMT -8 Matt said:

It's tough running a forum, It's been hard work to get my forum active since I started it last September, it is possible though, personally I find that general chat sites tend to to better than sites focused on one specific topic, if you try to reach to a wider audience you may find that your forum starts to do better, even if you want to keep your forum centred around one main topic it wouldn't hurt to add a couple of general chat/games boards as well.

i kind of disagree because
there are way too many general chat forums out there
waaaayy too many
so it kind of gets boring and old basically and people don't care that much anymore to join several and just stick with one.
i'd say forums about one specific thing do way better because its more unique and attracts more people to join especially if there is no other forum about the same subject or at least not active ones

anyways

Haimovfids
you have to reach out to people who are interested in birds at the right places...
just facebook ain't gonna cut it
and i don't see you affiliated with any other animal related forums besides one ant forum... two things right there that you can improve in and might help to get more members

get more animal related forums to affiliate with you , thats one 
two, join big animal forums where they are active and see if you can advertise there , possibly in signature and just be active there yourself and people might join your forum too
three , see if there is any popular bird blogs/websites that you can affiliate with

definitely try to keep advertising on facebook though
especially among all your friends and on facebook pages thats for bird fans? i don't know lol, i don't have facebook so i don't know much about it

[Matt]

Jul 1, 2016 15:48:31 GMT -8 Pebbles said:

May 9, 2016 12:48:20 GMT -8 Matt said:

It's tough running a forum, It's been hard work to get my forum active since I started it last September, it is possible though, personally I find that general chat sites tend to to better than sites focused on one specific topic, if you try to reach to a wider audience you may find that your forum starts to do better, even if you want to keep your forum centred around one main topic it wouldn't hurt to add a couple of general chat/games boards as well.

i kind of disagree because
there are way too many general chat forums out there
waaaayy too many
so it kind of gets boring and old basically and people don't care that much anymore to join several and just stick with one.
i'd say forums about one specific thing do way better because its more unique and attracts more people to join especially if there is no other forum about the same subject or at least not active ones

anyways

Haimovfids
you have to reach out to people who are interested in birds at the right places...
just facebook ain't gonna cut it
and i don't see you affiliated with any other animal related forums besides one ant forum... two things right there that you can improve in and might help to get more members

get more animal related forums to affiliate with you , thats one 
two, join big animal forums where they are active and see if you can advertise there , possibly in signature and just be active there yourself and people might join your forum too
three , see if there is any popular bird blogs/websites that you can affiliate with

definitely try to keep advertising on facebook though
especially among all your friends and on facebook pages thats for bird fans? i don't know lol, i don't have facebook so i don't know much about it

Well my forum is doing fine and it's a general chat forum, so I'll still keep my original opinion. Though I do understand your point. I think a general chat forum if run right can still succeed very well. I think any forum can do well if it's run right.

[♥ ℒʊ√ ♥]

I agree, Matt .

We're general talk as well, and going strong for more than seven years.

I don' t think any type of forum is right or wrong. It just needs to be the right fit for the admin who creates it and his/her target audience.

[Pebbles]

you guys are totally ignoring the obvious though - ever looked at how many people have a general chat forum on proboards? AND do you know how many people try and get somewhere with one outside of proboards as well? not sure if you guys go anywhere else besides proboards forums but there is a lot out there, using other forum softwares and still their general chat forum do not get very far because there are too many out there and it is not that interesting anymore. ( btw not trying to insult any who own a general chat forum, im just talking about what i know from a lot of experience when it comes to forums and being a member on too many lol)
if it was really popular thing to have a general chat forum, all the general chat forums on proboards would be having 30+ members activity every day at the least.
yes your forums are active but with how many a day? 50 people? 100? 200? .....

anyhow, numbers like that don't matter much i know, don't get me wrong, i know as long as the forum is active and the community is awesome and friendly with each other even just 5 members online every day is completely fine.

all i was trying to say is , look at it from another point of view, just because you guys, your general chat forum has got a small amount of active members online everyday.... doesn't mean thats all there is out there... and that doesn't mean general chat forums do better than forums about something specific... the opposite really
and this is really not an opinion, i can easily proof to you guys what im saying but its like you also don't much realise there is forums out there much bigger with more activity because they are about something more unique, a certain tv show or music band or cartoon/anime.... them forums are more one of a kind because there are none or not many out there about the same thing and so most people who love that one thing go to THAT forum.... sorry if you did not follow that haha i may sound a bit confusing

anyway....
same with general anime forums for example, there are too many out there that so many fail to succeed
how many times  i see it happen people give up on their forum or it gets closed within a month because nobody is joining and be active

how many graphic forums have been made on proboards, jcink, invisionfree.... and got closed soon enough because there is tons already out there 

wow im rambling lol
guess i should stop typing now because i made my point pretty clear, twice now 

[♥ ℒʊ√ ♥]

All genres of forums are over-abundant.

Success is what the admins are happy with, whether it be 5 active members or 5000. Activity is what counts.

Also, even in general chats, there is a lot of diversity. Some feel game boards with one word replies and post counts are important. Others concentrate on content and prefer more than one word/one sentence replies. Neither is right or wrong. It's what the admin envisions.

But just because a forum falls under a certain category doesn't mean they operate on the same levels.


And yes, many forums die, but it doesn't meant they shouldn't have been created. Just that process alone can be a stimulating/learning process for an admin. It can encourage and nurture their skills.


Success has as many definitions. It's not one thing for everyone.

[Kami]

The same can be said for single-topic forums though. When I was running the ad board here on Support, the vast, vast, vast majority of advertisements were -- and are still, from the looks of it -- from RP forums.

When the board was reorganised to have the subboards you see now with genre divisions in 2010 or so, by the end of the first few months I was literally sleeping only 4 hours / day because the RP board ads were so numerous that if I didn't sacrifice sleep, I would have literally dozens of pages of RP forum ads to check and moderate. General chat boards? Maybe two threads total.

I'm not saying that the ad board here on support is indicative of the % of ProBoards sites that are for each genre, because I know there are hundreds if not more general chat forums that don't advertise here (and have never done so).

Some of them even have some of the largest userbases in the entirety of the service; I believe the biggest forum on ProBoards, even if you include support, is a general chat forum with literally thousands of users per day.

But! Even if it weren't, success is defined by the person running the forum, as ♥ ℒʊ√ ♥ has stated above. It genuinely does not matter if there are a million boards with the same overall topic. It's all about what you bring to the the table, and working hard -- sometimes harder than if you chose a different topic -- to see the results you feel define "success" to you.

[Pebbles]

Jul 2, 2016 13:44:06 GMT -8 Kami said:

The same can be said for single-topic forums though. When I was running the ad board here on Support, the vast, vast, vast majority of advertisements were -- and are still, from the looks of it -- from RP forums.

good point, rpg forums, cant believe i totally forgot about those myself haha
but anyway
thats the whole point, it has got nothing to do with wether its about one specific topic or it is a general forum

saying forums tend to do better when they are general is just strange to say, thats what my whole point was really.
it is about how you are as staff and what you do with your forum. subject does not matter at all.

i just didn't want the poor guy to be discouraged because he is trying to make a bird forum and wants to help people with birds and then gets told he should make it different. there is no need to make it different, the subject of the forum itself, its what you do with it and how you advertise, what content there is and how hard you actually really try to make it something.

[Haimovfids]

Thanks so much guys for giving great advice!

[Haimovfids]

I'm trying to get my forum active. I have been making most of the threads. I have one really active member and 2 admins (including me). I think I need some advertising skills. I have this Facebook page but I don't really know what to say on it. I don't want to seem too desperate and drive people away, but on he other hand, I don't want to seem too chilled like I don't care. I have a YouTube channel where I advertise my forum in the description. I have 27 subs (I know it's little).

[Former Member]

Stuck for Content ?

If you are stuck for content for your forums threads. You can write about recent news/blog/magazine/newspaper articles.  Simply searching on google for a particular keyword will give you a list of them to write about, ie: give your opinion on them.
If you create a pretty good thread about said article and link back to the original work(always link back to the source), the owner/editorial team will notice this "back link" to you created through "google analytics" or "google alerts" or any other tools they might use. 
If they like what they see, they may even tell their own fan base about it and create a link back to your thread(if the content is good enough).  This is one way to funnel new users.

Enter your search term into google, make sure you have the "news" tab selected and "sort by date".
I have highlighted 3 articles that could possibly be used in this case.  Remember, form a opinion, write about it and link back to the source.




Targeting new Followers

In the example below I will just show you how to use twitter, the same approach could be used for pinterest,tumblr,facebook etc using different tools.

First you want to use the search feature on twitter and enter a topic/niche/keyword etc.
Make sure the "top" tab is selected, this should show the most popular people first(ie: people with the most followers/re-tweets)



Ok so lets kill two birds with one stone here
This first lady paints birds/animals on stones. Great, we can not only start to check out her followers and maybe follow them, but she also creates some good content we can maybe write about too?(another content funnel). As long as we credit the original author and link to her twitter/blog or whatever.

Lets find out who is following her.  Why ? She creates good content(bird/animal related), therefore some of her followers must also like birds/animals?

Copy down her twitter handle and head over to tweepi and sign in with your twitter account.
Selected the "follow followers" option and enter her handle.



Free accounts on tweepi are restricted to following 200 accounts per day If I remember correct, so just take that into account.
In the columns dropdown, make sure "bio", "last tweeted" and "follow ratio" are enabled.

A user with 60-140% follow ratio will most likely follow you back.
Make sure their last tweet wasn't 6 months ago, that's a dead end.
The most important element here is the bio, look through each bio and find people who have animal/pets etc in their bio.
By doing this we are "targeting" people we know love animals and are more likely to join the forum. Also known as "targeted traffic" 

The last entry is an ideal personal to follow, she likes Guinea pigs, last posted 12 hours ago and has a follow ratio of 110%



That should be enough to get you started. Do this 100+ times and you will build followers.

Remember, if your content is poor, none of the above is going to help and Always have a link to your forums where people can see it straightaway.

[Haimovfids]

Thank you SO much! I will do what you said.

I really appreciate the time and effort you put into this.