How to get members to stay?

[Former Member]

How does one get members to stay and be active?

I have had several members join, but not stay.

I've heard people say my site is unique and to keep it up - but how do I get members to stay?

I'm very active and always ready to respond to questions and in the shoutbox. I've started threads with members and always been pretty helpful...

But then, they go inactive for quite a while, popping in every now and then...

Is it my fault? Are they just busy? What should I do to keep things fun?

Any ideas appreciated!

[bigballofyarn]

May 6, 2019 12:15:48 GMT -8 @majority said:

How does one get members to stay and be active?

I have had several members join, but not stay.

I've heard people say my site is unique and to keep it up - but how do I get members to stay?

I'm very active and always ready to respond to questions and in the shoutbox. I've started threads with members and always been pretty helpful...

But then, they go inactive for quite a while, popping in every now and then...

Is it my fault? Are they just busy? What should I do to keep things fun?

Any ideas appreciated!

Everything I'm going to tell you is a personal opinion and it's fine if you disagree.

It comes down to finding what works best for you and your members. You are free to try all different things until something works. I went through many different looks, took feedback from members and Proboards Support, and eventually found something that worked for me. It's fine if the complete opposite works for you. I can only offer you advice based on my experience.

For me, a shoutbox is a deterrent. It's like adding a chatroom to a forum. You want people to post, not use the chatroom to converse.

Sometimes an administrator who is too active can discourage members. I would recommend against replying to every single topic you see. My post count makes up less than 1% of the total posts on my forum. I am dealing with larger numbers than you though. I have over 7,000 posts on my forum, but I separate myself from my members a little. I don't want them to feel like the administrator is always watching them. I stay out of their chat threads. I allow them to interact with one another without following them around.

If you have any friends who would be willing to help you with initial activity, that would make your forum look more appealing. When I look at forums, I want to see that all the topics are receiving replies, not just the game threads. I also don't want to see a forum where only a handful of people are making the topics.

How old is your forum? I feel like you made it less than a year ago. Unless you are advertising heavily, activity WILL be slow initially. Practice patience. Be open to trying different suggestions.  Look at some of your favorite forums, and see what draws you to them.

People will come and go unfortunately. I've had staff members of multiple years disappear.  One of them was someone who participated in the forum's Secret Santa. We texted each other and were friends on social media.  You won't always know why some people leave or disappear, but you can't take it personally. They have things going on in their own lives that you can't control.

[Kami]

I mean this in the gentlest way possible: you're asking an question that is impossible to answer.

There are a tonne of reasons why someone might join and then fall inactive, and a fair number of them are outside of your control.

If you're receiving positive feedback from your members and they're falling inactive anyway, I don't think there's much you can do about it -- clearly, what you're doing is appealing for the demographic your targeting, but whatever is going on in their life (work, school, relationships, whatever) are just a higher priority, on top of forums becoming less popular since the advent of social media.

The only thing is to just keep plugging away at it. Prepare yourself for the fact that statistically speaking, you'll only retain a small fraction of people who sign up -- even popular, user-heavy sites encounter this, but they simply have the sheer numbers where that 'small fraction' seems to be quite large to smaller sites.

Just keep plugging away (: If you're getting good feedback, then there's no reason to change what you're doing.

[Alex R Jamison]

Like both ladies above I think yours is a question with so many possible answers. Every forum will encounter different results and every member base will want something different on the forum. They're not born over night. Don't give up. Keep working. Hold strong. Every forum and every site in general will have people who just leave. If you already have people logging in every day you are off to a good start.

[Retread]

May 6, 2019 12:32:33 GMT -8 bigballofyarn said:

Sometimes an administrator who is too active can discourage members. I would recommend against replying to every single topic you see. My post count makes up less than 1% of the total posts on my forum. I am dealing with larger numbers than you though. I have over 7,000 posts on my forum, but I separate myself from my members a little. I don't want them to feel like the administrator is always watching them. I stay out of their chat threads. I allow them to interact with one another without following them around.

Tricky business, isn't it? An admin who's too active can definitely stifle things. On the other hand a completely absent admin isn't the answer either. Finding the right balance is important.

For what it's worth, on some of the forums I visit the staff use separate accounts for participating in conversation than the staff account which they use for administrative actions and 'official' postings. That way they they're seen as just regular members in most of their activities.

The purpose of the forum does have some bearing on what the goals of the staff should be. But often a good recipe is for the owner and staff to create (and maintain) the environment but allow the forum to find its own 'personality' by the activities of the membership.

[Dazzal]

I came from the system Yuku. Started out as Ezboard and went to Yuku around 2006 or 7. Unfortunately, Tapatalk bought them out, including Zetaboards which I had a forum on. Yuku had a different feel to it and the shoutboxes were very popular. Not as many board owners and my forum was very active. Quite a few of my Yuku members followed me to Proboards.

On my Proboard I do have a shoutbox because several of my members enjoy posting greetings. I have on the shoutbox to "Post Greetings Only" and it seems to work.

I ran a poll and asked the members to stipulate if they like the board owner/admins to reply to their posts. They all agreed that they feel that the admins are interested in them as a member and they appreciate the interactions. I do reply to a lot of posts and others I just click LIKE to acknowledge their presence.

I have had my Proboards for a year now and have over 40,000 posts, so it's not a bad turnout. I even closed for two months because of projects to get done. Proboards has a lot of owners and I end up posting on 20 some boards to reciprocate. I've gotten it down to where I can post quickly. That's pretty much how I do it. I tried different things to see what works.

[Sonikku1011]

It's hard to keep members, though here's my advice. Be sure to log in at least once a day, and post in a few topics or create new ones. This will show that you take the time to interact with your community, a inactive staff team doesn't look good at all. Maybe come up with some contest ideas to get your members to stay and continue posting. Adding new features such as a badge system could possibly help with the activity too.

[Retread]

May 7, 2019 8:51:50 GMT -8 Dazzal said:

I came from the system Yuku. Started out as Ezboard and went to Yuku around 2006 or 7. Unfortunately, Tapatalk bought them out, including Zetaboards which I had a forum on. Yuku had a different feel to it and the shoutboxes were very popular. Not as many board owners and my forum was very active. Quite a few of my Yuku members followed me to Proboards.

On my Proboard I do have a shoutbox because several of my members enjoy posting greetings. I have on the shoutbox to "Post Greetings Only" and it seems to work.

I ran a poll and asked the members to stipulate if they like the board owner/admins to reply to their posts. They all agreed that they feel that the admins are interested in them as a member and they appreciate the interactions. I do reply to a lot of posts and others I just click LIKE to acknowledge their presence.

I have had my Proboards for a year now and have over 40,000 posts, so it's not a bad turnout. I even closed for two months because of projects to get done. Proboards has a lot of owners and I end up posting on 20 some boards to reciprocate. I've gotten it down to where I can post quickly. That's pretty much how I do it. I tried different things to see what works.

May 12, 2019 7:10:25 GMT -8 Sonikku1011 said:

It's hard to keep members, though here's my advice. Be sure to log in at least once a day, and post in a few topics or create new ones. This will show that you take the time to interact with your community, a inactive staff team doesn't look good at all. Maybe come up with some contest ideas to get your members to stay and continue posting. Adding new features such as a badge system could possibly help with the activity too.

Lots of good stuff in those posts. Let's focus on a few of the concepts embedded in them and some other ideas they brought to mind.  Maybe this will also trigger ideas from others reading this thread.

Input from the community.

When there are opportunities to allow members to voice their opinions on forum operations, make use of them. A suggestion box is one way. Polls, or other ways of presenting questions allows members to have their opinions heard.

Groups

You can create groups that don't have any powers assigned to them but are used as a way to acknowledge the quality of contributions a member has made to the community.

Contests

Trivia contests, writing contests, art/graphics, etc, can be a lot of fun. As a reward, you might give the winner a badge or a Custom User Title. They can proudly wear the bragging rights they earned on every post they make.

Personal Messages

They aren't just for corrective actions. You can express your appreciation for those who make good contributions to the community through PMs.

[Retread]

Oh, I just thought of one more!


The Like System (use it but don't abuse it)

Depending on the type of forum, the Like system might be appropriate and add a convenient way of acknowledging good content added by your members. If you enable it, be sure to not overuse it as that just dilutes the value. Liking every post you see makes a like from you seem meaningless.

But as you read through the posts and threads, you can quickly and easily acknowledge those posts which add knowledge to the community or promote harmony. The member gets a notification and others reading those good posts will also see your approval.

[Former Member]

Love these ideas!!! Thank you guys SO MUCH!!

[dlobr]

I find forums hard to keep active because of facebook and instagram, I think before those sites were created forums did well, people are to addicted to fb, in my opinion.....

[Radrook]

Thanks for expressing that view. I had suspected that Facebook, Twitter, and the youtube-viewer comments sections were cutting down activity on discussion forums and making a forum-success much more difficult than it had been before.   In any case, the suggestions offered here are excellent and might remove other causes for non-activity. Administrator over-participation struck a particularly poignant note in my case. 

[dlobr]

I don't think Admin participation is the problem, if anything, if you were to have Admin who weren't active, I think that looks terrible and that you don't really care..... I have been doing a Christian ladies forum for over 20 years and started with forums until it went from very active to not so much, thanks to facebook, so I opened account on fb and started one there and it was very active for quite awhile but almost a year ago I decided to leave fb and so my forum search began and here I'am, I sadly have very few but thankful for those few, had more but don't to like keep non participaters around, I' m not into numbers on a member list. Sadly a few friends from fb just couldn't figure out this platform and others obviously can't pull theirselves away from fb. I have thought about giving up but the few I have asked that I please don't, they love the forum "Christian Ladies Group". Wishing fb would die LOL.... it pretty much has for myspace.....

[Radrook]

True. administrator participation is essential. However, in my case, since I receive practically ZERO responses and Zero Membership, administrator participation is all you see. So that might give some sensitive guests the impression that the administrator is attempting to hog the whole forum and will be vehemently breathing down all the members' necks whenever they dare to post. 

On the other hand, having a forum with zero participation and not participating oneself, will render the website static.
So it is similar to being between a rock and a hard place situation. 


Fortunately,  those kinds of consistent zero-membership, zero-participation scenarios are statistically extremely improbable. However,  as is evident by my website-they can happen and stubbornly persist. So that is why I qualified my statement concerning administrator- participation with,  "....in my case...."