Launching an online community!?!

Stephen

Stephen

Ecommerce SEO / SEM
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Sorry for the questions, but the advice I get here is so great, better than beer!!!

I have some niche sites and with at least one or two I'd like to consider launching a complimentary online community. The problem I see is that I can get this all set up rather easily, but it needs content (posts) from users, whilst potential users may not be so tempted to get involved when there are no (posts). It seems like a little bit of a vicious circle!

I'd love to get any practical / actionable tips on how to get things rolling from the start!

Cheers
 
My advice would be to use BuSo as a model. The number of forums are intentionally kept small and very focused. New forums are added only when there is enough interest about a particular topic to necessitate a forum just for that topic.

Personally, I like this model a lot. How many times have you gone to a forum that might even have twice the number of members BuSo currently has, but the forum looks like a ghost town? Aside from the obvious (forum might not be good quality), the answer is, there are simply too many forums and as a result, even with lots of posts, the whole thing comes across as "not very well populated". 1 forum with 20 posts looks a lot better than 10 forums with 2 posts.

I'm going to use the same kind of structure for a music community site I'm building. The key here is to start small and pay close attention to what people are talking about. From there you can add new sections/topics/features as needed. This also has the effect of keeping the forum easier to manage overall.
 
You also have to think about if your niche is already catered for.

If there is a thriving community why would they go over to your forum? What are the current forums negatives.

some subjects don't warrant a forum. For instance if your niche is genital crabs people will mostly only be looking to get rid of the problem, and once they have the chances are they wont partake in your community.

If you have a man who can you could always get a scraper spinner and poster bot created.

so that it would scrap yahoo answers, spin the question and post it. with another account doing the same for the answer.

that way you could relatively easily create a very active looking forum.
 
Rage said:
You also have to think about if your niche is already catered for.

If there is a thriving community why would they go over to your forum? What are the current forums negatives.

some subjects don't warrant a forum. For instance if your niche is genital crabs people will mostly only be looking to get rid of the problem, and once they have the chances are they wont partake in your community.

If you have a man who can you could always get a scraper spinner and poster bot created.

so that it would scrap yahoo answers, spin the question and post it. with another account doing the same for the answer.

that way you could relatively easily create a very active looking forum.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this, very good input.

Any ideas on where I should look to get the scraper/spinner/poster bot set-up?
 
Stephen said:
Thanks for this, very good input.

Any ideas on where I should look to get the scraper/spinner/poster bot set-up?
Click to expand...

I've no idea to be honest with you, there must be someone making something to do this, Carter may know of someone who can / has done this who could probably guide you
 
Also.. make sure to engage, engage, engage.

Online communities follow a 90/9/1 rule.
90% lurkers
9% actve users
1% of users responsible for 90% of the content

IN the beginining, YOU have to be the 1%

::emp::
 
My two cents:

Give people an incentive!

People who get incentives to do certain things will often attempt to do it.

For example,if you're making a forum where you want people to speak on whatever niche you're in, make a video and a thread speaking on how you are doing a giveaway and/or raffle.

The top ten posters by the end of the month will be able to get apart of that raffle in which they will randomly be picked to win whatever prize you're giving out.

Rank the prizes from First, Second and Third (i.e. First Prize: $200, Second: $100 Third: $50)

By dishing out an incentive, people will see a need to participate in the community you are trying to build.




.
 
I've been thinking about doing the same too..just haven't done it yet.

Here are some links that's convinced me that it can be done with the right execution:-

An Enlightened thread on WF by BlogHue (is he on BuSo yet?). A really detailed blueprint from to prep to launch. Great pointers on populating your forum with the initial posts and building the hype before launch.

http://www.wickedfire.com/enlighten...blueprint-lets-build-some-ugc-gold-mines.html

Another helpful article on how to populate a forum or a Q&A section on your site.

http://www.leanmarketing.ca/how-i-am-using-a-faq-plugin-to-hack-my-way-to-ugc/

Hope that helps. Would be very interested to follow along if you decide to do it.
 
In my younger years I built two moderate sized forums, nothing huge but very active. Later sold both so forums when done right can be valuable assets.

Pretty everything obvious has been covered in the thread but there's one thing that happened to me with both forums after I got the ball rolling a bit. Forum with a bit of traction seem to become an asshole magnet. I don't know what it is but when there's not that much members yet to enforce the unspoken etiquette of your community, assholes will start to creep in. What I mean by an asshole is someone who's only job is to go into threads, make mean or overly sarcastic comments, make other members feel dumb and overall make the forum unpleasant experience for anyone contributing. And this is not even plain old trolling, it's just turning every conversation into shit one way or another. You'll quickly notice a decline in new threads because nobody wants to make a new one and deal with the assholes. How you want to deal with these guys is up to you but I just got rid off anyone who was clearly offending other members often and declined the "good spirit" of the forum, and also because they weren't providing anything valuable and in the end it's up to you to moderate the quality of your asset.
 
Anton @ Uberaff said:
In my younger years I built two moderate sized forums, nothing huge but very active. Later sold both so forums when done right can be valuable assets.

Pretty everything obvious has been covered in the thread but there's one thing that happened to me with both forums after I got the ball rolling a bit. Forum with a bit of traction seem to become an asshole magnet. I don't know what it is but when there's not that much members yet to enforce the unspoken etiquette of your community, assholes will start to creep in. What I mean by an asshole is someone who's only job is to go into threads, make mean or overly sarcastic comments, make other members feel dumb and overall make the forum unpleasant experience for anyone contributing. And this is not even plain old trolling, it's just turning every conversation into shit one way or another. You'll quickly notice a decline in new threads because nobody wants to make a new one and deal with the assholes. How you want to deal with these guys is up to you but I just got rid off anyone who was clearly offending other members often and declined the "good spirit" of the forum, and also because they weren't providing anything valuable and in the end it's up to you to moderate the quality of your asset.
Click to expand...

Thankfully we are not seeing that here, but I have seen that in other forums.
 
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