The Right and Wrong Way To Grow A Forum

Do you think the person that created this forum really had a clue what s/he was doing? Nobody will participate in a forum that looks this empty.

There are a few lessons here:

1) When you launch a new forum you begin with just one subject/topic. As the forum grows and it becomes clear that you need more than one place, you create another topic.

2) Don’t try to predict what your community will talk about in advance. This is what leads to empty forums like those above. Just respond to what they talk about – and put an influential member on that topic in charge of that section. If your members talk about obscure widgets from china a lot, create a separate forum for it with someone who speaks about the topic the most in charge of moderation.

3) It’s really hard to be the first person to create the topic. So when you do create the second forum you transfer relevant existing threads (and if you have any, you don’t need the forum) from the old forum to the new forum.

p.s. This is my favourite example of a terrible online community.

Comments

[Robin Hamman]

Hi Richard,

Some good points here.

I'm always surprised by how many communities launch with dozens of empty topics, spreading the small (or no) user base quite thinly across them. As you say, it's important that, in the early days, the users you do manage to attract have someone to have a conversation with. Keeping to one general topic, or a small number of topics, is the best way to do this. As user contributions increase, you can, as you've pointed out, begin to identify the topics that are likely to work, and pull these out into new, more specific topics. It's a technique that we used at the BBC, where I co-authored the message board discussion host training back in 1998, and something I continue to help clients understand now that I'm working as a social media consultant.

Great site - lots of good advice and information here!

Robin Hamman
Head of Social Media at Headshift (http://www.headshift.com) and also at http://www.cybersoc.com

[@Reeb1981]

Hi Richard

Interesting post; as I am still learning, could you outline exactly why you think the example is a terrible community? Would be really useful to me. I have my own ideas, but am in need of extra input from you to see if I'm on the money!

Avid reader of your blogs by the way; always easy to digest and informative.

@Reeb1981

[Nancy Wolff Leary]

Richard,
You make some good points. One item I'd address differently relates to "putting a member in charge of" a forum topic. I think the idea of a community is that belongs to the members, and assigning a member to lead a topic feels a little contrived. Perhaps it's just semantics, but I thought it was worth a mention.

[Dr Search]

Thank you.
Excellent commonsense.
Liked your example of a terrible online community:-)

[you are the love of my life]

Well good post!Forums will never get old because its the only way to get all your solutions.Its an online discussion site where people can post messages and respond to each other.Ne ways thanks for sharing such a helpful information.

[Affectionate_beauty]

In my opinion you stole this article and placed on another site. I had already seen.