Forum Success, how is it achieved?

[Cedric]

A thread about what makes a successful forum. As we all know, creating and maintaining a thriving forum takes effort and dedication. But what exactly contributes to a forum's success?

From my experience, I believe that a forum's success depends on several key factors:

• Engaged and active members
• Relevant and high-quality content
• A user-friendly interface and easy navigation
• Consistent moderation to maintain a positive and respectful community
• A clear and defined mission or purpose for the forum

Of course, these are just some of the factors that contribute to a successful forum. I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences on what you think is essential for a thriving forum.

In addition to discussing the factors, I also wanted to share some tips to ensure forum success:

• Encourage member engagement through interactive features such as polls and discussions
• Regularly update the forum with fresh and relevant content
• Make the forum easy to navigate and visually appealing to keep members interested
• Stay active and respond to member inquiries in a timely manner
• Continuously assess and improve the forum to keep up with the changing needs of the community

Let's work together to create and maintain successful forums!

 

[Strawberry]

• Engaged and active members
• Relevant and high-quality content
• A user-friendly interface and easy navigation
• Consistent moderation to maintain a positive and respectful community
• A clear and defined mission or purpose for the forum

100% all of the above and especially the top one. Forums are pretty much nothing without their members. I think each individual would measure success in a different way on their forum too. Some prefer a small tight-knit community where you have the same active users each day, whilst others would prefer a bustling community, many active users at once, hundreds of posts per hour. I feel that once you have achieved your desired level of activity, you can measure how successful your forum is for you personally.

 

[PGen98]

Absolutely spot on with your tips, it's hard to find success these days, but the vast majority comes from active engagement and fresh content. It can be hard, particularly at the start, to find traction, but persistence is key!

 

[Cory]

Being a resource board, it's kind of hard to find forum success outside of the resources and perhaps the minimal services offered. I mean, I myself am not very dedicated to the general discussion areas as I am in the resource and service areas, which is one reason my forum may be so inactive in terms of posting. Fresh content and engagement can go a long way in keeping members active and interested. If I were better at creating different types of fresh content, I would probably do so more often, but since I'm so into coding and forum support that seems to be my major focus on the board.

 

[Arantor]

What are we calling 'success'?

 

[Cory]

What are we calling 'success'?

I'm sure everyone has a different definition of success, but I'm sure many would agree with some of the key aspects Aero listed in the OP. I'm sure it's also dependent on the niche of your board as well.

 

[Heatman]

Having a forum with a user-friendly interface which is also very easy to navigate with lots of high quality contents, any visitors that comes on board will definitely find it interesting to stay back and visit more often. They are likely to turn to active members along the way.

 

[Jason]

A big problem with my main forum is finding knowledgeable people in my niche. As of now they haven't discovered the forum or don't take it seriously.

 

[Reverie]

• Engaged and active members
• Relevant and high-quality content
• A user-friendly interface and easy navigation
• Consistent moderation to maintain a positive and respectful community
• A clear and defined mission or purpose for the forum

Engaged and active members is one of the biggest things. If you can find at least 5 people who will commit to your community - it can help build the community and create a welcoming environment for all! Keeping a clear and defined mission or purpose for the community will also continue to keep push people to participate. If a website loses its mission - people lose the momentum. Creating a positive and respectful community also is super important.

A forum is nothing without its members and I think that's the biggest thing to remember when wanting a successful forum!

 

[Ravenfreak]

Engaged and active members is probably the biggest thing to achieve to make a forum successful. I would definitely add that to the top of any list. Of course you want to have high quality content on your forum too, depending on the niche of the forum. If it's a tech related forum you want to add tutorials, and be in depth as much as possible in your posts. You also need to have a community that's easy to navigate, and is user friendly. You need all of these to have a truly successful forum IMO.

 

[joelr]

While I agree that forum success is dependent on an active and engaged userbase, it also leaves you susceptible to the Engagement Trap: a race to empty and trivial engagement for the sake of engagement. I wrote about this in a guest article for Invision Community:

What Is The Engagement Trap (And What To Do About It)?

The engagement trap is a race to community activity for the sake of activity. It's usually measured by simple aggregate numbers like the total number of posts, topics, likes, or members. You don't want members to chat. You want members to learn, to advocate, to innovate, to educate, to support, t...

invisioncommunity.com

Most of the leading thought leadership now is to move beyond forums. It's about focusing on throughout, results, content, or delivery of solutions. In other words, how many questions did the community solve, how many downloads did a resource obtain, what was the feedback rating on an article, etc. If you are only running forums and measuring your success by activity, you are setting yourself up for failure.

 

[Cedric]

While I agree that forum success is dependent on an active and engaged userbase, it also leaves you susceptible to the Engagement Trap: a race to empty and trivial engagement for the sake of engagement. I wrote about this in a guest article for Invision Community:

What Is The Engagement Trap (And What To Do About It)?

The engagement trap is a race to community activity for the sake of activity. It's usually measured by simple aggregate numbers like the total number of posts, topics, likes, or members. You don't want members to chat. You want members to learn, to advocate, to innovate, to educate, to support, t...

invisioncommunity.com

Most of the leading thought leadership now is to move beyond forums. It's about focusing on throughout, results, content, or delivery of solutions. In other words, how many questions did the community solve, how many downloads did a resource obtain, what was the feedback rating on an article, etc. If you are only running forums and measuring your success by activity, you are setting yourself up for failure.

Great article @joelr — I’ve written something along those lines before although not so extended and beautifully as yours.

Registration metrics are not important

Although admittedly I have never thought about stuff like downloads, or rating on a resource. It makes sense though.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Lately if I login to the forum and at least one person is responding to my posts, I'm happy with that.

Success is when I'm not talking to myself haha

 

[joelr]

Lately if I login to the forum and at least one person is responding to my posts, I'm happy with that.

Success is when I'm not talking to myself haha

I always check out FAF/DC every day!

 

[Jason]

Engaged and active members is one of the biggest things. If you can find at least 5 people who will commit to your community - it can help build the community and create a welcoming environment for all! Keeping a clear and defined mission or purpose for the community will also continue to keep push people to participate. If a website loses its mission - people lose the momentum. Creating a positive and respectful community also is super important.

A forum is nothing without its members and I think that's the biggest thing to remember when wanting a successful forum!

Yeah, you need a couple of posters, especially knowledgeable posters in your niche, to keep things cooking. You might have to pay them, though.