Post by The Referee on Jan 26, 2023 0:14:19 GMT -8
In a now locked thread the subject of finding new members came up. Personally I love forums because it is easy to look at posts from years ago. You can't do that on all the instant gratification platforms, there you are lucky if you can find something from a week ago.
Also mentioned as the average age on forums. I have members ranging from 15 to 90, but the average age is late 50s. In addition to my forum which is a niche of a niche of a niche really, I have a blog by the same name, a group on FB by the same name, I post links from the blog and the forum on FB and also on Twitter. I also have seven groups over on MeWe and I post links there. My focus is the forum and the blog, everything else is just a place to share stuff where people will see it. I have been growing by about 40-50 members a year.
I agree that the current directory is not very good. I am hopeful that when v6 comes out the directory will get a real makeover. Categories and a lot of sub categories would be good.
But I encourage you to spend time on some other platforms so that you can get the word out. Put your forum in your profile, and find places where you can share links. I run groups on MeWe that are a lot larger than my forum. But MeWe is like FB, you can not look very far back in time without a lot of work.
The good thing about MeWe is that it subdivides things into a ton of categories so it makes it pretty easy to find your niche and then you have people you can interact with that may read one of your posts and come visit your forum.
Also mentioned as the average age on forums. I have members ranging from 15 to 90, but the average age is late 50s. In addition to my forum which is a niche of a niche of a niche really, I have a blog by the same name, a group on FB by the same name, I post links from the blog and the forum on FB and also on Twitter. I also have seven groups over on MeWe and I post links there. My focus is the forum and the blog, everything else is just a place to share stuff where people will see it. I have been growing by about 40-50 members a year.
I agree that the current directory is not very good. I am hopeful that when v6 comes out the directory will get a real makeover. Categories and a lot of sub categories would be good.
But I encourage you to spend time on some other platforms so that you can get the word out. Put your forum in your profile, and find places where you can share links. I run groups on MeWe that are a lot larger than my forum. But MeWe is like FB, you can not look very far back in time without a lot of work.
The good thing about MeWe is that it subdivides things into a ton of categories so it makes it pretty easy to find your niche and then you have people you can interact with that may read one of your posts and come visit your forum.