Strategies How would you revive an inactive community that has a lot of content?

[Cedric]

How would you breath new life into a forum/community that has gone dormant ? Perhaps you want to buy a forum that was active years ago, but not so much today?

Many of us have encountered the challenge of an inactive community yet with a lot of content lying dormant. It's not impossible to revive the spark and bring your community back to life. But it's not easy either.

Let's come together to brainstorm and share our creative strategies for rejuvenating such communities. Have you successfully revived an inactive community before, or are you currently facing this challenge? What steps did you take to breathe new life into it?

Discuss your experiences and ideas. Did you focus on re-engaging existing members, attracting new members, or both? How did you promote discussions and encourage participation? Were there any specific content or event initiatives that worked exceptionally well?

Additionally, how did you address any issues that may have contributed to the community's decline in the first place? Was it a lack of moderation, outdated technology, or shifting interests within the community's niche?

Let's explore various techniques, from content marketing to community events, gamification, redesigning the platform, and more. By sharing our success stories and learning from our collective wisdom, we can provide valuable insights and practical tips for fellow community managers facing the challenge of reviving inactive communities.

So, what are your tried-and-tested methods for breathing new life into a dormant community? Let's brainstorm and inspire each other to revive those communities with untapped potential!

 

[Senkusha]

With my first forum, granted this was like 15 years ago....

So I started my forum back in 2003 as a general fan site toward a particular anime show. Keeping in mind that this is the heyday of Forums, Google searching was primarily the way to gain members. After a series of unfortunate events (database crashes, people moved on toward other interests, and just a general dying of the fandom -- oh look, NEW shiny over there!), I found myself with a dead forum.

The first thing I did was give my forum much needed updates in the software. I also branched out into additional shows that I had an interest in. I began some other general role playing games and I began using Facebook and Twitter more to try to spread the word about my fan site.

The second thing I did was, I reached out to all the old members I had accumulated and used the Announce Topic feature to send an email to everybody, letting them know about all the new changes and upgrades that were going on with the site.

The third thing I did was I focused a lot of energy into the role playing part of my site. I began coding modules that would help with the aspect of role playing, which attracted certain people to my page, although, it didn't really attract the kinds of people who were interested with the foundation of the website.

Posting everyday is super important, and while I'm having a hard time keeping up to a standard in today's world, I do at least try to visit everyday I think that maybe a monthly announcement post or maybe a quarterly announcement post that gets delivered to people's Inboxes does help. After all, I was just reminded of two forums that I had just forgotten about. The trick though is for the announcement post to not be spammy, but have something legitimate in the content, as a way to inform members of important changes and evolution occurring with your site.

One thing I haven't figured out yet is how to attract people to visit and become members to a forum that will contribute to the type of content I want to feature. Maybe I'm just the only person in the world who's interested in what my core website features?

 

[Paul]

This happened to me in about 2009 (6 going on 7 years into Funjoint). I had lost interest a bit. Facebook had taken over the world and the forum was basically a ghost town for 6 years). I had a message from a guy wanting FJ to get back to activeness and he got me interested again and now 8 years later we haven't looked back. So while the forum is 20 years old, it was very quite for 6 years in the middle with only 3 active members.

Back to the question however, started with e-mails to the current members of the time, lots of word or mouth happenings and advertising. A bit of luck but everything worked.

 

[Darth Cognus]

Doing just this is one of my engagements and I'm a bit stumped. I think it depends on why it's in the barrel, how far down it is and how caught up the site is to its state. In the engagement the site has lacked an overall hand since ~2015 (absentee owner, admins with vague directive and limited access), languished since nearly that point with stuff slipping away, and still maintains systems that assume it's in a more popular time.

My angle is to trim it down to what it can support, attempt a recruitment drive based on remaining users, and try to give it a spot in a gaming community that's largely left it behind. It will never dominate again without a miracle at owner level but it might be reflected on more fondly if the lights are kept on properly. It has incredible 2003-2014ish resources - mods, writing, activity&history. And there's been useful content since but the dwindling appeal is very clear.

Might work, might not, giving it a try. The owner hasn't been inclined to sell nor to offer directive or even respond when I asked for advice, so I'm sort of making it up as I go and doing what I think is best, and giving it an adaptable spot to be bought and reworked, remain as an archive with scattered activity, or be sacrificed (bought with commercial interest/shut off) which would be a shame, but getting it covered by archive.org and other methods is part of the plan too.

 

[Cedric]

This happened to me in about 2009 (6 going on 7 years into Funjoint). I had lost interest a bit. Facebook had taken over the world and the forum was basically a ghost town for 6 years). I had a message from a guy wanting FJ to get back to activeness and he got me interested again and now 8 years later we haven't looked back. So while the forum is 20 years old, it was very quite for 6 years in the middle with only 3 active members.

Back to the question however, started with e-mails to the current members of the time, lots of word or mouth happenings and advertising. A bit of luck but everything worked.

It's amazing you didn't give up when it was 6 years being a ghost town. But then again, that may be one of the good things being on a free host, it didn't cost you a penny. Glad it got reignited though!

 

[Cedric]

Doing just this is one of my engagements and I'm a bit stumped. I think it depends on why it's in the barrel, how far down it is and how caught up the site is to its state. In the engagement the site has lacked an overall hand since ~2015 (absentee owner, admins with vague directive and limited access), languished since nearly that point with stuff slipping away, and still maintains systems that assume it's in a more popular time.

My angle is to trim it down to what it can support, attempt a recruitment drive based on remaining users, and try to give it a spot in a gaming community that's largely left it behind. It will never dominate again without a miracle at owner level but it might be reflected on more fondly if the lights are kept on properly. It has incredible 2003-2014ish resources - mods, writing, activity&history. And there's been useful content since but the dwindling appeal is very clear.

Might work, might not, giving it a try. The owner hasn't been inclined to sell nor to offer directive or even respond when I asked for advice, so I'm sort of making it up as I go and doing what I think is best, and giving it an adaptable spot to be bought and reworked, remain as an archive with scattered activity, or be sacrificed (bought with commercial interest/shut off) which would be a shame, but getting it covered by archive.org and other methods is part of the plan too.

Is this self hosted ? The owner does keep on paying for it, despite being absent? Shame he wouldn't sell. I don't get why people would rather let it die and not pass it to someone else. Is it that they think it will be revived miraculously by itself? Hope you can turn it!

 

[Reverie]

It truly is difficult to get a community revived. You have to decide if it is worth the energy to revive it. Sometimes with the right team mates it is fun and worth it. I think doing a solo revival would be stressful to me and not as enjoyable as I would prefer.

I would email the community and remind them about us and invite them to return. Before this I would reach back out to a few great people and see if they can help me flood the community with a bit of life again. New topics, perhaps move topics to an archive depending on if it is relatable.

 

[Darth Cognus]

Is this self hosted ? The owner does keep on paying for it, despite being absent? Shame he wouldn't sell. I don't get why people would rather let it die and not pass it to someone else. Is it that they think it will be revived miraculously by itself? Hope you can turn it!

If it's not literally hosted in a basement, it's close. I'm assuming it's a sentimental project kept on because the ads just barely make it viable and it still has community value. Alas he has no time or interest in actually running things. There was an attempt to buy out some years ago that was rebuffed. I suppose he was concerned of it falling into hands that would turn around and dump it. Or maybe he just can't let go, he's never told even the admin team so who knows.

I hope to give it a chance to clean itself up for whatever path it has next - I can't make the call where that destination will be, and frankly it's not my role to do so. There's been an assumed maintenance mode policy for a long time and I'm just continuing it in a more proactive way. I can only hope there will be a handover to someone who has the interest of revival in mind, if he doesn't wish to make it happen personally.

 

[Jason]

I don't see why not and another related question is "Would you revive a domain with some SEO potential?".

 

[Debashis]

To revive an inactive community with abundant content, it's important to engage members by hosting virtual events, discussions, and contests. Creating a sense of belonging by encouraging contributions, recognizing members, and facilitating collaboration is necessary too. Along with that, the promotion of the community is required through social media, newsletters, and partnerships. Always remember to adapt and evolve to meet evolving needs.

 

[Joeychgo]

Depends on the community -- But as a generic thing I would say first, make sure it has good on page SEO then work on improving off page SEO. Then I would reach out to the existing user base to try to get them active again. Then I would create topics to interest and engage members. Finally I would turn to social media to start to recruit other new members.

 

[Empire]

Define lots of content in 2024? 10K posts or 50K posts or what?

what makes that site worth reviving then any other site, why would you consider taking it over or bringing yourself to come back into the game on your old site, is it good enough to merge with others or close it down and use the database for another new site?

I mean with BAD SEO that's not going to help.. but build it

 

[Ravenfreak]

It depends on the niche of the community. If you were to revive a general discussion forum that has a large amount of posts, members, etc. it'd be hard to really get it going. Sure you could email all the old members and hope they log back into their accounts, but after a while they'd probably lose interest. Now if it was a different niche, perhaps one based around a video game franchise that is still popular it could work better. If I had a forum that was based around a popular franchise that was still going, I would do contests and tournaments where members could win prizes. (Either tangible prizes or in game ones depending on the game.)

 

[Nomad]

I once bought an inactive community (it did not have a lot of content, though), redesigned it, and sent emails to registered users to come back to the community. Dozens of people came back and some even started posting.

 

[NeoMetallix]

It depends on the niche of the community. If you were to revive a general discussion forum that has a large amount of posts, members, etc. it'd be hard to really get it going. Sure you could email all the old members and hope they log back into their accounts, but after a while they'd probably lose interest. Now if it was a different niche, perhaps one based around a video game franchise that is still popular it could work better. If I had a forum that was based around a popular franchise that was still going, I would do contests and tournaments where members could win prizes. (Either tangible prizes or in game ones depending on the game.)

Thanks for the idea. XD

For me I'd just bump interesting old topics that aren't irrelevant and try to gain interest by visitors. Someone browsing may be more interested seeing a little activity followed by interesting topics.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I would spend some time researching.

Try to answer a few important questions, like:

1. At what point did the activity decline?
2. What was the reason behind the decline?
3. What members were the most active?
4. When and why did they become inactive?
5. Is there still a market for the forum?

After you answer those questions, I think you can create a strategy on how to revive an inactive community.