Forums: How DO You Get People to Post!?

Running a web forum is no easy task. If you own one, you know how labor-intensive it is. You spent hours perfecting your forum. You thought up dozens of categories and topics. You customized the interface, set user permissions, sent out welcome emails. Tons of members signed up and logged in. Time for the payoff, right? Wrong. People log in to your forum daily, yet no one posts. Why?

1. People are lazy. They'd rather be entertained than contribute.
2. People feel shy. They're afraid of saying the wrong thing or initiating a conversation.

Don't get discouraged because nothing's happening on your website forum. The time has come to take matters into your own hands. How?

You're going to have to do some marauding as other people.

"What? Sneak around and pretend to be a random forum poster?"

YES.

As an experiment, I set up a posting forum "just to see what would happen." I chose to make it a rant and rave forum; everybody's got something to complain or cheer about, right? It took me the entire Memorial Day weekend, minus time out for evening social events, to set this thing up. Within two weeks of putting it out there, I had ninety members. NINETY! That's a pretty decent-sized group. You'd think there would be lots of chatter, right?

No! No chatter. Out of ninety, want to know how many people took the time to post? FOUR. One of them was a friend of mine, who I begged to help me out... and even she only posted twice.

So, that was when I committed the dastardly deed. I began logging in as other people, posting fake stories and perspectives. This got confusing after a while. Was Jenny the all-lowercase poster, or the girl with bad grammar? Was I logged in as Joe D., but telling stories from some girl named Mitsy's perspective again?

It didn't matter that much, as this was only a test anyway. But it did work. Once I got the conversational ball rolling, other people joined in. I even had to be controversial, pass some remarks that would incite people emotionally and jar them to action. That got folks posting as well.

Here's a related story, but with an unfortunate ending. A girlfriend of mine joined an online group of adoptive moms. The forum leader, an experienced adoptive mother herself, generously offered an information exchange forum where all the moms could converge and discuss.

A few months in, members noticed some weirdness on the forum, so they went snooping. What they learned was that the forum leader had multiple forum personalities! She would log in as one person, ask a question, log back in as herself, then answer it.

All hell broke loose. A mass of email back-and-forths ensued. The forum leader cracked under the accusations and started spamming every member, begging for forgiveness. It was utter pandemonium. My friend relayed the scandal to me.

"That's so dishonest!" she said of the marauding forum leader.

Dishonest? Well, maybe a little sneaky, yes. But in rating Shameful and Admonishable Networking Behaviors on a scale of 1 to 10, how much of a sin is it to incite constructive discussions for the betterment of a group?

When you consider that, 1. the woman wasn't being paid, and 2. she only wanted to help other moms along in the confusing process, it really wasn't such a terrible thing that she did.

I pointed out to my friend that this lady had smartly tapped into a marketing and communication tactic that's widely used and really works.

Who do you think sought advice from Erma Bombeck, Dear Abby and Emily Post before they ran well-known columns? No one did... because no one new who they were yet! So with each new release of their respective publications, internal writers had to pretend to be advice seekers, fabricate dilemmas, and then solve them.

Now, if your public forum is clearly a conversational hot spot, yet you're still logging in as five different people because "you're becoming attached"... well, I'd say that's a problem. Consider getting out more.

But if things are totally stagnant on your forum, this is really your only alternative to get it going.

I know a woman on one Ryze forum who asks nearly every day, "Why aren't you guys posting?"

No one ever answers her. That's because she's not giving anyone an incentive. That incentive must be emotional, and it must come in the form of riveting conversation. If there isn't any existing conversation, well, you're just going to have to invent some.

I wish I knew that adoptive mom with all of her imaginary forum friends. Because if I did, I would tell her, "Hey! You did a good thing."

Who knows, I might even have hired her to run my web forum.

Copyright 2005 Dina Giolitto. All rights reserved.

Find out how crisp, targeted copywriting can make a world of difference for your business. Dina Giolitto is a Copywriting Consultant with ten years of experience. Visit http://Wordfeeder.com for free tips on branding, copywriting, marketing and more.

---

Ebooks, Scripts, Websites, and more...

Adsense websites

Dont Over Accesorize Your Forums; Give it Community Content

Have you been to those forums where when it opens... Read More

How To Get Free Advertising By Participating In E-mail Discussion Lists

Posting messages to e-mail discussion lists is a great way... Read More

The Importance of Forum Participation in Promoting an Internet Business

Many internet business owners are really lost when doing anything... Read More

Forum - A Free Way to Get Traffic

Forum is a gathering of people normally have a common... Read More

Using Forums to Promote Your Business

When is work not really work? When it's fun!Using online... Read More

How To Maximize Your Profits With Forums

Forums are one of the most effective free internet marketing... Read More

Forum Signatures to Build Back Links - Helping Your Search Rankings

Building Backlinks! There are several ways to build backlinks. We... Read More

5 Reasons Why Participating in Forums can Benefit Your Business

Did you know that by simply participating in various forums... Read More

5 Proven Techniques to Build a Profitable Web Forum

You may have heard that having a web community is... Read More

5 Reasons You Should Market Online

If you've got a website you'll need to let the... Read More

Forums: How DO You Get People to Post!?

Running a web forum is no easy task. If you... Read More

How to Market on Forums and Message Boards Without Upsetting Anyone

Believe it or not, you can market on forums and... Read More

Why You Should Use (Not Abuse) Forums to Increase Your Traffic

There are dozens of reasons why you should look up... Read More

The Demise of EZBoard

For years, EZBoard was a community that offered relatively cheap... Read More

Forums ? Should You Have Them On Your Website?

Forums have become a common feature in many websites. With... Read More

Business Forums

Forums are a community where a group of webmasters can... Read More

Internet Forums - Six Ways To Avoid Disaster

Internet Forums are highly popular, they cater for all tastes... Read More

Five Tips to Launching a Successful Message Forum

Forums a.k.a. "message boards" can be great marketing tools for... Read More

11 Ways To Increase Forums Activities

Getting people to post in your forum is probably the... Read More

Seven Must Follow Rules While Participating In Message Boards

Participating in message boards (forums) discussions is a great way... Read More

Forum Software 101 - Why It is Vitally Important to Choose the Best Software to Run your Forum

When you go through all of the work and trouble... Read More

Search for Business Partners Effortlessly

With the internet revolution ushering in new modes of communication... Read More

The Benefits of Hiring Forum Posters

There are many business benefits to be realized by including... Read More

Get Traffic & Sales Using Discussion Forums

Message boards, discussion forums and newsgroups can all produce very... Read More

Forum Traffic - How to Get More Members on Your Forum

Getting more traffic on your forum can be hard. But... Read More