5 Top Tips For Your New Forum Launch

[Ash]

The launch of your newly created community can be a nerve-racking and sometimes frustrating time. Everything needs to be perfect because one bad aspect of your newly created forum can be the difference between success and failure. But what are the best things to do to prepare for your new forum launch? 1. Don’t Rush The most important thing that you need to remember is to not rush your launch. This is something that can be observed quite a lot. People get excited, a little bit too much, and want to launch their new community as soon as possible.



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[Darth Cognus]

1. This is good, only note is: don't rush but don't dawdle either. A steady sustainable plan lest you and any partners start slipping off the board and the place dies in its infancy. But not rushing is critical, I've had this one the hard way involving community forks from an existing platform, something which has to be paced and executed just right.
2. I'm weird but in some ways I do think a scrappy, slightly unfinished look can be a selling point. Obviously the place needs to work and be free of huge bugs but a) putting too much time in perfection can raise my note on point 1 and b) there is a certain charm to finding a place that is actively working out quirks here and there, you've already done your bit if the overall experience is decent, can be engaged with and has an audience.
3. This ties in well with point 2: being too completionist, having a full deck of rules right out of the gate risks intimidating prospective users. There is a critical moment of being part of something new that can be stifled if you already have a chonky rules list. Some guidelines are all well and good, do that, but I've seen people go on with pages of policies and that's just not the way to build up, you're not ready to do that. There's really nothing wrong with a gentle reminder via PM if it's truly necessary to keep people on the right page. Its an opportunity to come off as friendly, engage with the user, and perhaps make a friend through careful attention. And solve whatever issue of course, if it merits such a message. People in good faith generally will not start off breaking reasonable rules. This happens when people who push boundaries appear which I covered in the other thread.
4. This is solid. If you're brand new I'm not sure you even need a mod unless you're preparing for a volatile landing or need to get staff-level content running quickly. In which case this ties in very well with 5: what you really need is content producers and interested people to get off the ground running.
5. This is a point that needs to be timed well with appealing to the actual niche you want. Frankly it comes off when you're buying content bundles or doing post exchanges with uninterested people. Generic thread hooks come off as exactly that. The specialized interest should be in sooner than later to give people something tangible to grasp on. Otherwise you start off with pre launch content from a content bundle lacking in particular knowledge or interest which could even turn off people with a deeper interest that see vapid content. It's not easy because to get off running you kind of already need to be in the community you're trying to start. To bring together people who are otherwise organically interested in what you're on about, and offer a platform they'll actually use. It's possible to do it the other way but when forums are already a bit of a rough sell, you probably want to roll as few dice on this as possible.

Food for thought...

 

[Nomad]

Based on my experience I can say, if you dod not have handful of friends willing to help you without asking for money, you cannot become successful with your forum.