How to Get More Members

[Jason]

I run a drum lesson forum with an extensive off-topic area. I'm having trouble getting members but getting posts thru packages and post exchanges has done well. Anyway, what are some ideas to get 400 members like on AJ now?

 

[Cedric]

Some ideas:

- Hard work, promoting on a daily basis.
- Pushing good content, getting it ranked on Google.
- Keeping things fresh. You need to keep members interested.
- Make it easy for your guests to register.
- Referral programs
- Be Patient and persistent
- Engage with your current members

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[MrDawn]

After you share your forum in the promotion section on any general or promotion forum, it helps to get well acquainted with those members on those boards. Simply spamming your promotion thread and pm advertising is just going to push people away and make you look like an annoyance to the community. Best to try and fit in and make friends if you really want people to join. I see so many members with really low post count who just spam their promotion threads and don't even take the time to get to know the members who might join. Then they log off for weeks at a time. If that's their best, I'm not interested.

 

[JoshB]

Would agree with the above points. Finding members for my community has been a struggle and is something that I'm currently working on turning around. I think that the mindset for many is that building a forum and expecting it to have 40+ members and be active after just a month or two is highly unrealistic. This isn't to say that something like that happens but those are extremely rare to the effect that I would consider them to be unicorns.

 

[Jason]

The members at

Code Forum - Where your coding journey begins

Code Forum is a community that developers trust to help them exceed expectations. Where developers can learn, share and build their developer toolkit.

codeforum.org

Bizdustry - Online Money Making Forum

An online money making forum for webmasters, crypto investors, and those interested in business, internet marketing and investment

www.bizdustry.com

are impressive counts. What might have cause this to happen?

 

[Cory]

What might have cause this to happen?

Consistency among content posting, promotion, engagement, word of mouth, offering what your audience is after, etc. would probably be some of the primary factors.

 

[Reverie]

I agree with Cory - these great numbers is by continuous and consistent work ethic. Promotion & Engagement. They found where users who might be interested in their content and seeked them out probably quite a bit at first too.

I would recommend seeking out people who enjoy drumming. Music groups found on Facebook and etc may be good to reach out to. Leaving an advertisement/card at music stores may be worth while. With niche specific content you have to sometimes get more in the gritty side of things and be more personal with your approach. I would think some good SEO and marketing would also assist share and spread the word of your community on similar music communities or websites.

 

[Paul]

After you share your forum in the promotion section on any general or promotion forum, it helps to get well acquainted with those members on those boards. Simply spamming your promotion thread and pm advertising is just going to push people away and make you look like an annoyance to the community. Best to try and fit in and make friends if you really want people to join. I see so many members with really low post count who just spam their promotion threads and don't even take the time to get to know the members who might join. Then they log off for weeks at a time. If that's their best, I'm not interested.

Great post. Had someone recently who would turn up about once a week and all they did was advertise so I moved their advertising thread to archives. They deleted their account

 

[Empire]

Ask members to help and then those members ask other members to help then members do the same to even more members and go on and on

 

[~ True Legend ~]

Great post. Had someone recently who would turn up about once a week and all they did was advertise so I moved their advertising thread to archives. They deleted their account

Have you considered having a rule where only members with a certain post count are allowed to advertise?

After you share your forum in the promotion section on any general or promotion forum, it helps to get well acquainted with those members on those boards. Simply spamming your promotion thread and pm advertising is just going to push people away and make you look like an annoyance to the community. Best to try and fit in and make friends if you really want people to join. I see so many members with really low post count who just spam their promotion threads and don't even take the time to get to know the members who might join. Then they log off for weeks at a time. If that's their best, I'm not interested.

Agreed, the connections matter. If you mass spam, you just end up looking desperate. Simple as. And you give the impression that there’s no real community atmosphere as members may assume that members are only there because they feel an obligation of some kind as opposed to out of choice.

 

[Cedric]

Have you considered having a rule where only members with a certain post count are allowed to advertise?

I'm pretty sure Paul has this in place, but still once they reach the minimum post count, the problem does not fade away miraculously. So I like what Paul does.

Although, I've been guilty doing the same in the past, I'll confess.

 

[MrDawn]

Agreed, the connections matter. If you mass spam, you just end up looking desperate. Simple as. And you give the impression that there’s no real community atmosphere as members may assume that members are only there because they feel an obligation of some kind as opposed to out of choice.

You definitely don't want to spam up your own forum when you're the one and the only member. Some admins will make sock accounts when the forum is new as to make their forum look semi active so it doesn't look like they're spamming topic after topic to fill the forum sections.

 

[~ True Legend ~]

You definitely don't want to spam up your own forum when you're the one and the only member. Some admins will make sock accounts when the forum is new as to make their forum look semi active so it doesn't look like they're spamming topic after topic to fill the forum sections.

Yeah I am aware but I don’t like to do that as I like to uphold a standard of integrity on my forum. After all, if all members started such shenanigans it wouldn’t be much of a community right? And if they aren’t allowed to while I do that would make me a hypocrite right? A fast way to damage your reputation.

 

[Paul]

I'm pretty sure Paul has this in place, but still once they reach the minimum post count, the problem does not fade away miraculously. So I like what Paul does.

Yep, it's 50 posts. This person did 6 posts about a year earlier, returned did 4 or 5 all advertising over a few weeks so moved to archives. Same person does the same on at least one other forum.

 

[MrDawn]

I like to uphold a standard of integrity on my forum.

That's good. Staffing is a learning experience. Trial and error.

 

[~ True Legend ~]

That's good. Staffing is a learning experience. Trial and error.

Sure it is, but I have certain ethical principles I like to stick to.

 

[Darth Cognus]

Besides what has already been stated I would say the key is working with the kind of people you want to have before you even launch the site, or at least researching and appealing to holes you see are missing. If it's for a game, a franchise, a subject, build a presence in their existing venues and fill a need. I know nothing about drumming but I assume the principle is the same. l recall Cedric mentioning in another thread that this site came after years of experience and connections which helped jump start its appeal. People come here to engage with this subject matter and the off topic connections build around it.

This focus is then complimented by other, more general techniques offered in the first response. It's not the only way to do it but this is the most reliable, if still not trivial way I can think of. It's the legit version of making alts who in theory represent that pre-audience making the place interesting to engage with.

I will say, if it's a drumming/drum lesson forum but it only pops off with solicited traffic which primarily focuses on off topic stuff and only superficially engages with drumming, then you are not connecting with a true audience and you need to go back to the strategy board. It doesn't strike me as the easiest audience to connect with in the first place though unless your lesson content is downright supurb, which seems like something to prioritize based on the original description.

 

[Jason]

It always boils down to it takes money to make money, but I do know a webmaster who is into building followings without inflation of money and that's awesome he can do that, but it's not realistic for most people.

Besides what has already been stated I would say the key is working with the kind of people you want to have before you even launch the site, or at least researching and appealing to holes you see are missing. If it's for a game, a franchise, a subject, build a presence in their existing venues and fill a need. I know nothing about drumming but I assume the principle is the same. l recall Cedric mentioning in another thread that this site came after years of experience and connections which helped jump start its appeal. People come here to engage with this subject matter and the off topic connections build around it.

This focus is then complimented by other, more general techniques offered in the first response. It's not the only way to do it but this is the most reliable, if still not trivial way I can think of. It's the legit version of making alts who in theory represent that pre-audience making the place interesting to engage with.

I will say, if it's a drumming/drum lesson forum but it only pops off with solicited traffic which primarily focuses on off topic stuff and only superficially engages with drumming, then you are not connecting with a true audience and you need to go back to the strategy board. It doesn't strike me as the easiest audience to connect with in the first place though unless your lesson content is downright supurb, which seems like something to prioritize based on the original description.

I don't think it's as tough as your saying. Now there is a group of hecklers on various social media groups, but I'm not catering to that crowd cause I can't win them over anyway. I'm going for neutral drum players that see if I got good stuff and like it without bias.

As far as the off-topic section, I don't think it really matters as long as the drumming stuff is good enough to entertain drummers and also I am not catering to SEO rules cause I'm not using SEO for a traffic source.

 

[Darth Cognus]

It always boils down to it takes money to make money, but I do know a webmaster who is into building followings without inflation of money and that's awesome he can do that, but it's not realistic for most people.



I don't think it's as tough as your saying. Now there is a group of hecklers on various social media groups, but I'm not catering to that crowd cause I can't win them over anyway. I'm going for neutral drum players that see if I got good stuff and like it without bias.

As far as the off-topic section, I don't think it really matters as long as the drumming stuff is good enough to entertain drummers and also I am not catering to SEO rules cause I'm not using SEO for a traffic source.

If it's not that tough, and sometimes it isn't I don't have the niche knowledge to say here, then it looks like the path is clear. And as long as the drumming stuff really is solid enough for its target audience then you're set as well, I went by the original post that seemed to express difficulty in getting organic traffic as from what I have seen, bundles and exchanges lean strongly towards general inputs (rarely the specialized input one hopes to find), and off topic content. But if this has done better then you may just need to be patient and let it get there. Even with a clear path it will take time.

SEO is not a thing I ever wish to hammer on at the expense of other appeals, it's just an awareness to have so you can 'do well' and optimize a little but I agree with just focusing on other aspects.