Forums are the new status symbols and are in trend now-a-days in the world of internet savvy users, The web is quite literally littered with forums but mostly the forum owners are those people who are just starting to feel their way into this mystique and divine and at times ruthless world of internet, hence the result is that quite often we see forums starting off like a bazooka and soon tapering off like a water balloon projectile.
While opening a forum can be hectic at times but it doesn’t take a lot out of the administrator, however managing a forum and building a community over it can be a real pain. So today, we are going to discuss some tips & tricks that will help you out to effectively manage your forums, some of them may be slow but they are effective in the long run and will provide a steady growth to your forum.
The most important phase of development of any forum starts well before it gets to the floor. Before setting up your forum, you should take a good time out of your schedule to think about the type of forum you want, what exactly will be your niche, remember that cocktails don’t always go well especially in case of forums because there are simply too many users out there for your forum. You need to think about what you are going to offer through your forum. If your forum demands serious rules then so be it, but always remember that the clearer you will be before the launch of your forum, the easier it will be to manage it as you will know what you want and what you intend to give through your forum.
The web is an amazingly vast place and it is now next to impossible to find a niche for your forum that has not been explored before, so what’s going to work in your favor is your creative mind, and yes everyone has a creative mind, It is just that quite often people think logically and forget their creative side. So put your creative mind on a treadmill and start thinking outside the box so that you can stay in the competition and stay away from the competition at the same time. Think like a kid because for a child possibilities are present everywhere.
Having a lot of other forums of the same niche can work out in your favor if you keep a close look on them and adapt your forum accordingly, see what worked out for them and adapt it on your side in a different flavor, see what didn’t work out for them and try to diagnose the cause, maybe you can do that successfully where they failed. Having an eye on your competitor always helps.
Just face it you can’t be online 24x7 for your beloved forum. you have a life too, so in order to let your forum breathe easily you need staff and with staff comes a lot of troubles. You need to be sure that your staff understands their responsibilities and they consider your forum like their own and most importantly must have common sense when it comes to dealing with situations that may arise in a forum.
Many forums have invisible admins i.e guys who don’t think that they have enough time to talk with users and they assign this duty to other staff members but always remember one thing, you are the king of your forum and they are your people, the more you listen to them, the better you will have knowledge of your kingdom and in turn you can develop your forum in a better way.
Ah! The dark world of SEO, it just can’t leave us alone, the truth is that today human life is dominated by search engines so unless your forum is not intended for humans then you have to work on your SEO, and while it is easy to work some SEO magic by yourself but I seriously recommend doing thorough research on what you are going to do before doing it and if you are not sure then you should ask for help from a good SEO expert.
Content as usual comes last but is the most important. Just face it, your forum can’t survive without good content. Tt is almost entirely your responsibility to bring good content to your forum while it is young, occasionally a user will stop by who has a lot to offer for your forum but they are most often passing clouds, so you are the permanent cloud of your forum and whenever you feel the land of your forum is getting drier it’s your duty to nourish it with the rain of good content.
To summarize all this, Managing a forum is a tedious job it looks straightforward in the beginning but as you can see there is a lot more to it. So be prepared to work out of your skin to manage your forum and never ever slack off!!