What are some effective techniques for growing & diversifying a forum's user base?

[Debashis]

As forum owners and staff members, what measures can we take to grow and diversify our forum's user base?

I think most forum owners focus on growing their user base but forget the diversity part. If we have a diverse user base, we can have more vibrant discussions, increased innovation and overall a richer community as they will bring with them a broader range of experiences, opinions and insights. In order to grow and diversify the forum user base, we should focus on targeted content creation that addresses the community's needs and interests, keep the overall vibe of the forum inclusive, welcoming and engaging, marketing strategically by collaborating with other forum owners, influencers or by advertising through social media and reward the new users on reaching certain milestones to keep them excited.

Feel free to share your thoughts.

 

[Cedric]

Every community goes through different phases. And it’s true, in the beginning you shouldn’t focus on attracting diversity among your member base. Creating specific content takes time. It takes time to get noticed by that targeted audience. But slowly if you want to attract diverse groups, then slowly you’ll need to push targeted content.

What I mean is very simple with Admin Junkies. We started plain and simple as a webmaster community. Slowly specific devs are entering our community. If it makes sense. I’ll come back to this topic later with a better explanation, but this is a great topic.

 

[Reverie]

Being inclusive is definitely a big thing. Be welcoming to all members and not to allow certain cliques to form and not be welcoming to other users. You will have to create new content that might interest a wider variety of users.

Love this thread because it is very important to think about!