Creating topics on your own forum

[Cedric]

One of our primary goals is to keep our community engaged and active. One of the best ways to do this is by creating topics that spark discussion and encourage participation. However, coming up with great topics isn't always easy. So, what are some tips and tricks for creating topics that your community will love?

First and foremost, it's important to understand your community. What are their interests? What topics are they passionate about? By understanding your community's needs and interests, you can tailor your topics to their preferences, increasing the likelihood of engagement.

Another tip is to create topics that are thought-provoking and open-ended. Instead of asking a simple yes or no question, ask a question that requires some critical thinking and invites users to share their opinions and experiences. This will not only encourage engagement but also help to foster a sense of community among your users.

You can also try creating topics around current events or trending topics. This can help to keep your community up-to-date on what's happening in the world while also providing a space for discussion and debate.

Lastly, don't be afraid to experiment with different formats and types of topics. Maybe your community prefers polls or quizzes over open-ended questions. Maybe they prefer visual content like images or videos. Mix things up and try new things, you can keep your community engaged and interested.

Sometimes it's interesting to take the time and see what topics have been created already on your community and rewrite them in a better way that could spark more and better discussion than before.

So, what are your tips and tricks for creating engaging topics on your own forums? Let's start a discussion and share our ideas!

 

[Kale]

This had brought up the idea to add a current events subforum or so actually if the activity picks up. I just don't like adding forums if no one will use them much if at all.

 

[Cedric]

This had brought up the idea to add a current events subforum or so actually if the activity picks up. I just don't like adding forums if no one will use them much if at all.

It's always trial and error though. If something doesn't work out in the beginning, it should not mean you should give up the idea all together. It may be so that your community is not ready for it at the time. Your community evolves as time passes by, members come and go and your community is formed by your members. But you can't stop pouring in your life and soul. It's a full time job if you want to book decent results. If something doesn't work out, remove it and try again later when your community is bigger.

 

[Kale]

It's always trial and error though. If something doesn't work out in the beginning, it should not mean you should give up the idea all together. It may be so that your community is not ready for it at the time. Your community evolves as time passes by, members come and go and your community is formed by your members. But you can't stop pouring in your life and soul. It's a full time job if you want to book decent results. If something doesn't work out, remove it and try again later when your community is bigger.

I had the streamers forum since the beginning, but feel as if the crowd for that would rather use Discord or other streaming/streamer directory type sites to post their stuff. I think the next forum/subforum I add will just go by this trial and error method.

 

[Cory]

Thinking of "general" discussion types of topics has always been really hard for me. I can think of code-related topics sometimes to cater to the needs of my board, but my general discussion areas stay fairly inactive because no fresh content is posted to them very often. I know I can get ideas from other communities, but "general" discussion topics are mostly overdone to the point that you see the same discussions across multitudes of forums. Thankfully, when people give me ideas or I myself have an idea for a new resource, I can often muster up the courage to build the resources and publish them to my board, which is of course important for a resource board. I'm happy building onto the resources as much as possible, but in the same sense it'd be nice to see more engagement on the board, which would have to be "general" discussion types of topics considering most of my board is catered to resources and support/services.

 

[Ummagumma]

One thing I have always pretty much done is, one admin account and one user account for myself.
The Admin account I use to only do admin things and essential posts.
The User account I use to aggregate and generate topics based on the site and the nature of it.
Once established enough, I then use the account to just engage. It definitely helps.

 

[Arantor]

The question I'd ask: as community manager/owner, if you *aren't* contributing topics to the forum what are you doing?

Unless you're doing it the way my wife and I handle our roleplay site setup - she's the primary topic creator, I'm more the technical admin (but still, frequently, the #2 poster) - if you're not contributing to the content, you're probably doing it wrong. Someone on site team needs to be producing content for the community to engage with, even if it isn't necessarily the 'user 1 admin'.

 

[Aaron]

I have different accounts set up for different things for example I have a movie and TV list section where I post the latest movie and TV lists from the internet and that's done through a 'Movie and TV list' account. Then I have a blog so the posts from the blog are posted by a 'Movie Hub' account and anything official will generally be posted by a 'Media Planet' account.

I love creating topics on my forum. I feel that if an owner cannot do it then they are not clued up enough on their forums genre and need to rethink if the genre is right for them.

 

[Heatman]

If I find it very difficult to create new threads or topics in my own forum, why should I expect others to create new topics? It's my community, so adding new topics should be one of my duties. It doesn't mean that I should be adding new topics everyday but once in a while whenever it's necessary.