How to Make Your Forum More Popular

Have you ever asked yourself why some site attracts tons of traffic and others don’t?

If you are into online arena I am sure you have this question. I had this question and I still have this question which I ask myself each time I stumble upon any new website.

We all have this question and probably each of us have an explanation to it but not an answer.

Today we will discuss the way to find the answer to it but we will confine our discussion to forums only.

We will see why some forum become more popular than others and how can you make your forum more popular?

Let us begin.

1. Having conversations

Isn’t this the whole point of having a forum?

Users with similar interest can interact with each other for common problems and you as an admin of a forum needs to make sure healthy discussion and conversations continue to flow and things do not get heated up.

2. Forum needs constant work

I get many forum partnership proposals and one thing I see very common in those proposals is they lack the idea to create user engagement and content on a regular basis. Most of the proposals are of the nature where they think we can have a forum online and user will generate content which will rank higher in search engines and generate more & more traffic. This may be true for large forums but to make the ball rolling you need to work on getting the best content for your forum yourself.

As of today I have more than 125 articles or more than 12,000 posts for Go4Expert.com and I still continue to post everyday. Remember that the above numbers do not include articles by other hired writers.

3. Only forum is not mantra for success

I am yet to see an only forum which is a big success, SitePoint, Daniweb or even Go4Expert, all provide solid information that is helpful to user and then user create content around those helpful topics.

4. Keep it light

People like to talk. Make sure you have a place in your forum where user can talk or interact with other members on a more lighter note. Have space where user can present more about himself and where he can meet and greet other fellow members. Only niche forums will actually kill your forum and so always add the general forums.

5. Be yourself

On Go4Expert.com I have more than 12,000 posts and when I talk with many users they ask me why I did not use more than one account to interact or why I do not have accounts like Admin, Owner….

No doubt I also tried having more than one account but could not get pass my way of writing. No matter which account I use for posting I will have the same style of conveying things which is very easily identifiable (at least for me). As I could identify myself, I thought of having only my own account and not use multiple usernames.

But yes I never prefer admin username because I like to keep things real.

Make sure you enjoy what you are doing. Make it part of your life or else you cannot continue using your forum for years and if you cannot use your own forum why would other bother to use it?

Further Reading …