UBB.Developers Forums Community Development Promoting Your Community Forum Showcase Competitors..

Seems my forums have lost to competitors. I had done everything I could to attract more visitors but they never ever end up coming back. Or it's rare. How can I make my forum more appealing to the members that are going to the Competitors forums?

Better search engine placement is 1 key aspect. Another is to build a sense of community that will bring users back repeatidly. A site that is continualy changing hurts more but rather it should remain more static in looks but still should add features as needed. Also moderators and admin should have a continual presence as well as going in posts as well as responding to questions in a timely fashion.

I don't mean to be rude, but I just visited your site for the first time. Can't say that I'm a typical surfer but here are my impressions.

Your site doesn't really have an identity. I looked it over and there just wasn't any focus on a specific thing that'd make me want to come back. The forums appear to be pretty generic as well: there did not appear to be a central theme to the boards but rather just a bunch of forums to talk about general stuff. I chat general stuff elsewhere, in communities I belong to or participate in that have offtopic boards.

Take this FWIW..........

I love the greyscale look of your forums, and you've done a great job of putting them together but you do need a central theme...a focus.

Having a trustworthy staff that is willing to be active even if the forums are slow will help ramp up the number of visitors.

I don't claim to have all the answers and Netwerkin is by no means huge but I do some things that seems to help. I usually post a lot of industry news and it seems to some people that I don't engage in a lot of the forum conversation. I just created a new member named TheNewsGuy and now he posts all of the news. I'm getting more involved in the general discussions now.

I'm also working hard on providing at at least one page of new content a day (tutorials, news, etc.). I think that if you put the same effort into building a site that can support a community that you put into building the forum code then with some patience you can have the community that you're looking for.

I know I need some sort of focus, I was going to do a Technology site but I thought nobody would like that. Entertainment may be my focus, I'm not sure. I still want to work on my BB for now. Once I get it looking okay I'll move on to some content.

And thanks for that little_joe.

Now that I think about it, I really don't think I'm up to running a forum. I think I was alot better off working on other sites.

Running a forum is a full time job. It's like raising a kid.

I know, but I lack the skills that I used to, to make a forum look alot more appealing. I try everything but It's like I need to find a whole new set of members to get this place running.

the design looks fine, it's more than likely a question of content and focus as x and the others have stated. It would help to fix the link to your forums up top as well. That's the first place people would click and they are greeted with a message to click some obscure "down below" area.

Yeah, your right about that. I will fix that.

Jazz it up with colors that stand out more. Something that pops out and grabs you.

Here is my board. I had 2 million hits last month.
http://www.warriornation.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi

My greys are cool!

And I like your nav system there.

I think the greys are great. color doesn't bring visitors, content and search engine placement do. You also have to be visible at other places (like here) and people will follow links in sigs etc.

I saw a Pokemon forum last year that had like 60,000 members and 2700 people online. It was a butt ugly website but it had the content and community that people were looking for.

Yes your right colors dont bring visitors. I guess I was trying to build upon what has already been recommended.

I can only share what I have done, its not the perfect solution but all I know.

Advertise by posting in other public forums about your site. Sometimes I will just spend an hour finding sites related to mine and post about it.

List on every search engine.

Now bringing members to your site is different than retaining them. Does no good if people pass through and then never return.

This is where visuals come into play. Yes I agree you can have an ugly site and 60,000 members. So you either target a hot subject and keep consistancy or you can dazzle them with looks.

Grey is a good color and yes your greys are cool. What you should do is play with trying to make buttons stand out more, make a menu that stands out either by color or design.

And for the record I hate pokeman, lol There is something wrong with that I dont know why but that subject seems to draw alot of people. Its one of those unique subjects or Hot subjects I mentioned.

Design plays some role, but content plays a bigger one. Thats where TheX is right. I think the compeitors have similar content, So I need to do something thats a little different content wise I think.

Pokemon is of the devil. Sorry but I have something against them myself. Keeping visitors is tough. At Netwerkin we deal with computer help and issues so a lot of people drop by, get their answers and go. I feel a sense of accomplishment in that though since they left knowing more than when they arrived.

Thankfully some of them return and leave tutorials or some other form of legacy and add to the community. I have been bashed at some other sites because I don't have all the answers to peoples questions. I never claimed to, and I opened a community for people to share their knowledge and experience. I've said this many times before but it bears repeating...

A community is meant to be the sum of it's members, not a temple for it's owner.

I hate pokemon too.

But I need ideas. I was thinking Entertainment by my Competitors have Entertainment. Maybe their weakness is Technology but other sites are doing that (Eg. Netwerkin) where I think I wouldn't win out at all. But nobody from Netwerkin comes so maybe it would be appealing for a different set of comminities.

I really don't know what to do.

Maybe you need to take a break from thinking about it and just surf around and see what you're interested in. What are the things that you like to do or learn about that you've never seen a UBB for?

Anything I can think of it's widely done in UBB's. I'll take time going around. Another thing that isn't done all the time is cars, but I don't know that much about cars.

I agree with Thex, it's a full time job though i have read people saying that a forum becomes a live of it's on after a while...but that's not the case. It requires full attention and interaction with your visitors and moderators. Good moderators are also crucial. If they are doing their job and put some energy in their moderated forum, it can boost the quality of the whole forum.

Making a car forum when you have no idea how to assist the visitors by their questions, it will doing more harm then good i guess. Visit other forums and look carefully how people enjoy themselves on it. What makes them stay? I know a lot admins have problems to raise a community.

I think what makes them stay is the content, if it can be enjoyable as well as less stessful (Eg. help forum of some sort) it will get somewhere. At least thats what I think.

*Looks around*

Competitors... *sigh* They really can be nasty at times.

My board was started because a bunch of us at a board got sick and tired of the drama and general BS that was always going on behind the scenes... the 'administration' changed on a daily basis and dirty laundry was aired for all to see. That's all great if you're running a soap opera site... but it doesn't work on a political discussion site.

Anyway, so we built our own site. The admin at the old site then proceeded to thrash the snot out of our site through email campaigns and threats of lawsuits over copyright material :rolleyes: , personal attacks on some of my members... it was/is nasty!! Mind you, our response has always been no response at all. We just go about our business and we simply don't throw the ball back.

But it has hurt my site. How can I fight something like that? Well, I found a way... and so far so good... but I'm not done yet...

As everyone has suggested here, change is GOOD!! ... So I upgraded... and installed all of the bells and whistles. That attracted attention... cool!... now I've got them at least there... so now I have to keep them. How I'm currently doing that is by continuously promising "MORE TO COME"! ... You see, I didn't unveil all of my bag of tricks all at once. I still have a few things up my sleeve... and I now have a captive audience.

This coming week I will be changing my format... We'll still be a political discussion board... but we're going to do it in a way that, as far a I know, has never been done before on a site like this. Everyone is excited about the changes and are anxiously awaiting the future.

This is the best thing I cold have ever done for my site!... You've got to first GRAB their interest... but then you have to hold it. Change is good. Unique is better!

I know all about the former admins of other boards and their smear tactics. It really is pathetic but after a year it has settled down at Netwerkin though we still get a lot of mention elsewhere. I used to be really active at a board where flaming was the main source of entertainment and any intelligent conversation was squashed. When I got tired of that and opened my own site I had to deal with the ICQ spamming and e-mail harrasment and of course having to ban certain people many many times on my boards, in fact I still have to approve registrations to keep the board from being spammed up.

It's all worth it when I get the thank you e-mails from people that may have only posted 2 or 3 times but got answers to the issues or questions that they original came to us for.

CTM, Pokemon is long from dead. Maybe it's fanbase has gone down but not finished. Even through the most dead times of a forum, I've been through them. And all the time you get thise pleasing resulsts in the end.

I'd edging towards a Movie/TV Reviewing forum, get staff to write reviews on the latest movies/TV shows. It may get somewhere, because i haven't seen many Movie/TV reviewing sites/forums.

I probably will, since I looked around some UBB's yesterday and saw nothing like that. This could be very interesting.

LD,

design wise, your boards are fine. personally, i think they're really nice looking! others might disagree, and think they're ugly, but... its all personal opinion, and everyone has their own.

as far as community goes, tho...

'entertainment' isnt, exactly, a unique idea. its difficult to put a new spin on it. thats why you're losing business -- users might go to your forum and think its just like every other 'entertainment' forum.

so, your quest is to make your forums better -- or at least different.

what have you done so far, to entice people to 'buy' your 'product'?

thats a great starting question for anyone with any of their sites.

look at all the different beers out there -- thousands just in america! and yet its budweiser that outsells all of them.

why? it doesnt taste really any different. its packaged nearly the same.

the difference is in its commercials! yeah, other major beers have just as many on the air -- bud budweisers' are always the best, the funniest, the most UNIQUE. thats their edge.

in the same line of thinking, your boards need something that sets them apart from other boards. perhaps you could create an ongoing posting game for your users! or maybe a new feature, where users earn avatars. start up a daily (weekly?) review sheet, where you discuss and rate the latest movies (but schedule the post, so that users know when to expect each new one).

it doesnt have to be anything overly complex or ellaborate or even time consuming. as long as your boards have some sort of feature that can not be found on (many) other boards, YOUR forums will be the ones that are visited.

and there y'go.

I rarely drink Bud, as I prefer darker ales.

LD, seriously...consensus is that you need to have a forum about 'something'. It needs to be of interest to both you and your users. If you don't have a focus, or are all over the place, then you probably aren't hooking the members.

Rather than trying to come up with a new idea, build your forum around your existing members and whatever it is that they are into. This way you keep your existing user base, and grow from there. Shifting gears altogether is likely to alienate the few people you have, and then you are starting from scratch. It's not so terrible to have a 'hang out' for your net buddies and go from there.

Anyway, welcome back Rob, hope you didn't get too much sand in your shorts at the beach.

Well I went ahead with a Movie/TV reviewing thing, were people can get an inside see on the latest Movies/TV shows to see what others think. I asked a few members and they liked it. So I went ahead with it and I'll see how it goes. I may also affilate with other forums that are more based on a different subject.

I've always believed that forums are complimentary to a site. They're a natural addition to a site, rather than the site all by itself.

It seems to me, that what's lacking is the basic demand/supply interaction that drives all web sites. The visitors to any site want something, find out what it is and give it to them.

When you go out and about surfing around the Net, what are you looking for? If you have to go to 20 different places looking for information then maybe you'd be better setting up a site like that.

My own site was started because I was unhappy with the lack of moderation on another site and the lack of updates. I thought I could do better so I started my own site that provided a safer and more professional environment for my online friends that I'd met. With the recent redesign of the site, it seems that we've now hit the nail on the head.

I've got a nice design, some in-depth content that gives my visitors what they want so that they only have to visit my site and know that we've got the best of everything. I've also spent a lot of time promoting the site around Newsgroups, similar sites, search engine listings, etc but these things will take up to 6 months to bed down but the site is snowballing. In the 11 days the redesigned site has been live it's growing by 8% a day in terms of visitors and page views.

The forums are a tool for my regular visitors but the majority of my visitors are one-offs. There are features and information on the site that target the two groups of visitors.

So I would say find a focus for your site, work out how your forums serve that focus, talk to and get to know your audience, promote your site like hell and know your competition. Be inspired from other sites and what they've got and if you don't know how to do something technically, give it a go and learn.

I also scour my WebTrendsLive statistics for hours to find where everybody is going, where they come from so I can use that information to target my promotional activities or when it comes to redesigning parts of the site.

Hope this helps.

Or LD approach some popular website and say that youll act as their forum if they dont have one.

Thats if you cant find your own stuff

That would be a 1 in 100000% chance of finding a good Entertainment site that needs a forum.

Well if its entertainment ya after then its gonna be hard. I was thinking maybe expand your horizon.

It's more Movies/TV. Gaming is too popular IMO.

I'm getting more posts per day ever since I changed. And members are actually coming back more too. Maybe it's just some lucky thing that will wear off.

I like the header of your site, that is what I call umm good.

You'll do great Tony. As everyone says it just takes a great deal of time, effort and creativity. Find something that you can build on; something that separates from other forums. The most critical aspect of a successful site however is your energy as the designer/admin. If you have the confidence, people will feed off of your energy.

Ahh...What he heck do I know about running a forum.

Well I have had alot of people asking why my forums are down, seems like I did get some visitors. Hah.

I have had so many ideas while my forum has been down. I have pretty much recorded every one and so I hope this may get it somewhere further.

Thank you for all your help.