Starting a new online forum can be exciting – but getting people to actually use it is a different challenge.
A forum needs members to create discussions, ask questions, share experiences, and respond to one another. But when a forum is brand new, there may not be enough activity to give new visitors a reason to join.
So how do you get a new forum off the ground and turn it into an active community?
Here are some strategies that can help.
Pre-Launch Strategies
1. Define Your Niche
Identify the specific community you want to build.
What is your forum going to be about? Who do you want to participate? What kinds of conversations do you want to encourage?
It’s also worth looking at existing forums and communities in your niche. What are they doing well? Are there topics they’re overlooking or ways you could provide a better experience?
The more clearly you understand your audience and what you’re offering them, the easier it will be to build a community around it.
2. Build a Strong Value Proposition
Why should someone join your forum instead of participating somewhere else?
Your forum might offer focused expertise, a particular type of social environment, a more welcoming community, specialized information, or simply a place where people with a shared interest can connect.
You don’t necessarily have to reinvent the concept of a forum. You need to give your particular audience a reason to participate in yours.
3. Develop a Clear Vision and Mission
Think about what you want your forum to become and the type of community you want to create.
What kind of discussions do you want to encourage? What type of atmosphere do you want? What do you want members to get out of participating?
Having a clear vision can help guide decisions about your forum’s categories, rules, moderation, content, and future development.
4. Choose the Right Forum Software
The software you choose will affect how easy your forum is to build, customize, manage, and expand.
UltimateWB is a great choice for building a forum as part of your own website. The built-in forum app gives you the tools to create and manage your forum, while UltimateWB also includes many other built-in social and community apps that you can use to build out the rest of your website.
You get extensive customization options, moderator tools, and spam controls, without having to piece together a collection of separate plugins or services.
UltimateWB also uses a one-time payment model for the downloadable software rather than requiring a monthly platform subscription. You can host your website yourself or use UltimateWB web hosting.
Because the forum is part of your website, you can also combine it with other features as your community develops, such as user profiles, messaging, blogs, articles, photo galleries, listings directory, classifieds, events, rewards, and other social features.
5. Build a Pre-Launch Audience
If possible, start building interest before your forum launches.
Use social media, targeted advertising, guest blogging, email marketing, and other channels to reach people who are interested in your niche.
If you already have customers, website visitors, social media followers, or an email list, let them know about your upcoming community.
You can also use the UltimateWB built-in mailing list app to build your mailing list and send HTML mailers without needing HTML experience.
Post-Launch Strategies
1. Create Engaging Content
Don’t expect the first members to create all the activity themselves.
Seed your forum with useful discussions, questions, and other content related to your niche. This gives early visitors something to read and respond to and helps establish the kind of conversations you want your forum to have.
As members join, encourage them to contribute their own questions, discussions, experiences, and information.
Read: How to Get Your New Online Community Started: The Chicken-and-Egg Problem
2. Actively Moderate and Engage
Be present in your forum.
Respond to questions, participate in discussions, welcome new members, and keep conversations moving.
Moderation is also important. Address spam, disruptive behavior, and other problems promptly and fairly.
Read: How to Prevent Forum Spam: Effective Ways to Protect Your Message Board
You want members to feel that their contributions are noticed and that the forum is a well-managed place to participate. You can make use of the UltimateWB built-in Rewards app to award points or credits for posting, commenting, and engaging with content.
3. Promote Your Forum Effectively
Once you have some activity, promote your forum through channels where your potential members are already spending time.
Share useful discussions on social media, mention the forum on your website and in newsletters, and use SEO to help people discover valuable forum content through search engines.
You can also build relationships with relevant websites, organizations, and communities in your niche.
Rather than simply promoting the fact that you have a forum, promote the useful discussions and information people can find there.
4. Build Relationships With Key Members
As your forum grows, you’ll probably notice that some members participate more frequently and constructively than others.
Pay attention to these members.
Recognize their contributions, thank them for helping others, and encourage their continued participation. Over time, some of these members may naturally become important community contributors or leaders.
A healthy forum shouldn’t depend entirely on the site owner to keep every conversation going.
5. Continuously Adapt and Improve
Your community may develop in ways you didn’t originally expect.
Pay attention to what members are discussing and what they seem to find useful.
You may discover that certain categories are much more popular than others, or that members are asking for features or types of content you hadn’t originally considered.
Use that information to improve your forum.
You can add new categories, adjust the organization, introduce new features, host events, or try new ways of encouraging participation based on what your community actually wants.
6. Utilize Technology and Automation
Take advantage of the tools available in your forum software to reduce the amount of routine work you have to do.
Features such as spam controls, member notifications, moderation tools, and other automated functions can save time and help you focus more on actually building the community.
The more your forum grows, the more useful these tools can become.
7. Monitor Performance and Metrics
Keep an eye on metrics that help you understand how your forum is doing.
Useful things to monitor can include:
- New member registrations
- Active members
- Number of new topics
- Number of replies
- Website traffic
- Returning visitors
- Most active forum categories
- Popular discussions
Don’t focus only on the number of registered members. A smaller forum with active participation can be much healthier than a large forum where most accounts never participate.
Read: Technical Considerations for Setting Up a Forum Website: Size Matters
Additional Tips
- Invest in good design and user experience: Make your forum visually appealing, easy to navigate, and consistent with the rest of your website.
- Focus on trust and security: Use appropriate security measures, protect member information, and make your policies clear.
- Celebrate community achievements and milestones: Recognize useful contributions and important community milestones to help members feel like they’re part of something.
- Be patient and persistent: Building a successful forum takes time. Don’t get discouraged by slow growth in the beginning. Continue providing value, participating in discussions, and improving the community.
Building a successful forum isn’t just about installing forum software and waiting for people to arrive. You need to give people a reason to participate, create a welcoming environment, and keep improving the community as you learn more about your members.
Over time, the goal is to create a forum where people aren’t simply visiting to read what you post. They’re starting discussions, answering questions, sharing their experiences, and coming back because they find the community valuable.
Are you ready to design & build your own active forum website? Learn more about UltimateWB! We also offer web design packages if you would like your website designed and built for you.
Got a techy/website question? Whether it’s about UltimateWB or another website builder, web hosting, or other aspects of websites, just send in your question in the “Ask David!” form. We will email you when the answer is posted on the UltimateWB “Ask David!” section.