Lately one of my friends wanted to add a community to his skateboarding site and to be honest I never had a good track record building communities, i’ve tried it several times so I know a thing or two about them, communities are twice as hard as making an established blog, in a blog atleast the latest post is on the front page and not in a forum/category or something, so it’s easier to get more exposure on a blog then a forum. I did some more research anyway and I think this post is different then other posts I’ve made so here it is, tips on how to add a forum to your blog.
The Forum CMS
Now before you go off in full swing to all the top forum script sites (paid) think about what it might do to you financially if it didn’t work out, it’s better to start out with a free forum script that can be transferred to a better paid forum script later on when it’s more established, here are my top 3 choices.
I’m personally using bbpress on my installation of wordpress in the news area, it’s not an actual forum, it’s more of a contribution area where people can suggest wp themes for my posts.
The strategy
In my opinion the best strategy is to hack the blog into the forum so that whenever someone wants to add a comment to the blogpost they go to a topic in the forum to discuss it further on, that way it might spark a more interesting discussion rather then on the blogpost itself, Ars Technica has been doing this for a long time, personally I love that strategy of theirs.
It’s also best to stay away from paid posting as much as you can, if you start off your forum with an incentive, getting organic posters gets that much harder in the future, I learned that the hard way with Gossip Forums.
The start-off
Like I said, getting a forum started is twice as hard as starting off a blog, usually people don’t join forums anymore unless they really really want to, and that’s highly unlikely to happen, so you have to improvise the first step to get users would be your friends and family, get them to join the forum and start topics and stuff, then goo on advertising your blog to the masses via free advertising, you would get the initial booster traffic at first but it will die out, after that you will definietly get atleast 1-2 new users/week. That would be the real growth of your forum.
September 29th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
You are right. It is just now worth the bother as the blogsphere is over crowded as it is with such sites.
September 30th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
I agree its really tough to start a forum in the beginning because theres so much competition out there
September 30th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Too bad my site does not have a good size to create a forum, because it does not address a specific issue
October 1st, 2008 at 1:56 am
I tried creating a forum but didn’t go through with it. I wouldn’t put it on a blog anyway. A website yes, but not on a blog. Hope everything goes ok with the project.
October 1st, 2008 at 10:28 am
Hmm, I never bothered with forums myself, but it definitely seems like a good way to get some returning visitors. But will it generate more revenue? The only cash you can really make from forums is from Adsense, but who knows? Let me know how it goes if you ever try it.
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:16 pm
I’ve always been advised to build our website traffic 1st, then hopefully if you implement a forum after wards you can drive the traffic you already have to the forum. Glad I don’t have problem like what to do with my traffic lol. All my traffic is unique as of now, I need some dedicated readers to join my cause!
October 6th, 2008 at 7:01 am
A forum is a great way to get people talking about your topic though, sure it’s true the internet has WAY too many of them right now but for a niche site owner a forum can be a huge benefit and is basically a must have.
A lot of forum owners will pre-fill their forum with content to ‘get the ball rolling’ and get people talking. dunno, might help someone.
October 11th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
I’ve been playing with bbPress for the past few months on a side project, it’s pretty easy to use but there are a lot more people using phpBB so it’s a bit harder to find stuff already coded for it.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Thanks for such detailed step-by-step explanation. I think having a forum at your blog is one of the key to its thieving.