Do you offer posting incentives on your forum?

[Henrywrites]

Running a forum can be a tedious task especially when the traffic is not coming as expected. How do you motivate forum members to keep posting on your forum?

 

[Cory]

My primary incentive for posting is forum points that people can buy items from the shop with, though it seems the shop has been barely used. I probably don't have enough creative items available. I have a resource board for the most part, so of course, people will be viewing more than posting.

 

[Reverie]

I previously incentivized posting with contests and purchasable content in the store with the forum money. I personally did not enjoy running the stores - but I know they are useful! Contests are what worked most for me, it wouldn't even necessarily be a posting contest but a themed contest. It interests more members and it brings a fresh aspect in for a bit.

 

[Tracy]

Most will use a credits/store ability (in XF, DragonByte has it pretty much locked in). Personally... I currently do NOT utilize any feature such as that. My users can post as frequently or infrequently as they want. Personally I don't really care.... as in the long run, my site is more about somewhere for ME to post than others..... I realize I'm somewhat an oxymoron in the forum field... but I chose using a forum instead of a blog to post my data.. it made it easier for others to participate if they wanted to by using a forum fromat.
Again, I realize that I'm somewhat an outlier as for my site, it's ran for ME at the base level. If others want to participate, then that's great. But my major concern is being able to dissemble data in my niche to others.
As I've already indicated... my site isn't so much "I have to get traffic" as it is an "I want to be able to publish information". I really don't care how much traffic it gains... but honestly... a part of me takes some pride in the fact that some of my articles on Google (and other search engines) have a higher precedence than MUCH larger sites.

 

[joelr]

Members are fundamentally motivated by two categories of motivations:
External motivations: a monetary prize, a gift card, a certificate, etc.

Internal motivation: a sense of pride, a sense of connection, helping others, recognition, sharing their authority, etc.

Posting for points (aka pay to post) tends to be a very bad way of motivating people. They:
- earn so little, it's not worth the external redemption value
- attracts the wrong kind of engagement. You get people to post offtopic or trivial, useless posts for the sake of posting
- not sustainable or lasting. Once they fulfill their ten posts of the "diamond package", they're no longer interested in posting because they were never interested in the subject matter anyways.

 

[Shortie]

On my forum, Promotion Addicts, we have an incentive each month where the Top Poster of the Month gets one month of VIP on the forum. This has worked really well so far and people enjoy being active on the forum to try and get the Top Poster of the Month.