How to run a Forum?

Note: This is not a question about how to develop a forum on the website.

I have a information website with 500 visitors daily (2000 page views on average).

I have installed a forum, but after a month, only 2 people have posted (out of 15000!). In all there are 6 posts - 1 welcome message, 2 people that posted query, 2 my answers to them and 1 thank you.

I don't think this is normal for a forum to grow. How can I involve people to participate??

Plz do not suggest to hire forum posters.

 

I think your content on the forum didn't meet the requirements of visitors. Please add more categories forum, introduce people, create backlinks in the same forum topic.

 

What type of website are you managing? You don't need to provide the URL, but I am just curious, does the topic relate to a need for a community? With the amount of visitors I would be inclined to say yes.

Are you also hosting a blog? At times, especially when all discussion driven questions are posted on the blog page, then the forum suffers a little bit because there's nothing driving them there to discuss. Instead, they post comments, ideas, suggestions on the comments section. Just some thoughts, try to be creative in incorporating your forums to your current audience.

 

That isn't great participation. I suppose that since you have the traffic then your topic choices might not be what your users are expecting to find or find interesting. Post a survey on your forum and ask your users what they would like to see at your forum and find out what they suggest as ways to make the forum a more viable source of information and participation. You may also want to do some type of engine search for your forum niche and look at other forums along those lines for new ideas and suggestions.

 

Jesus..your avatar.

Anyways I think constant high quality content is the key to long term success on a forum. It's so easy for a forum to become inactive and it can take a lot of work to keep it relevant.

 

Yes I have comments enabled to my website and I get around 5 comments daily. Should I remove comment and put a link to forum instead?? But I feel people will not be anle to comment because posting on forum requires registration and commenting is easy...

 

I don't know, perhaps that's something you will have to weigh out. It might be worth testing for a couple of weeks and see if registrations increase.

My personal thoughts are though, why would I go talk on forums where no one is if I can interact with the person providing content directly without registering and perhaps even have a discussion with other website regulars directly in the comments section? You'll have to give some form on incentive or kick-start to the forum to get it moving.

I have a website that also has both, one area is for me to post general news and updates on the blog portion. The forum is used to ask questions and for other people encountering similar issues to help one another. It has worked out okay. It seems to me that in my situation people were eager to ask questions and needed an avenue for that.

 

Create some topics that would make your users want to jump in and talk. Just sit down and think about the most interesting subject in that field.

You can also create some forum contest.

 

Another thought, a good option might be the above. Higher some forum posters to comment on those threads. Post 3-4 new ones everyday. If you can find people familiar with a niche that would be a definite plus.

 

What kind of contests can be run? Can you help me out in some more detail.

 

Do you have comments system in your blog? People ask questions as comments in my case

 

you need to build up some data or make more quality posts so that the potential member interested to participate

 

Hi,

Content is good for forum. So improve visitors of website.

 

create links to your forum on the web. use social networking , social book marking site and blogs comments. Do not advertise your forum on other forums as most of admins do not allow advertising of forums on their forums.

 

Do viral marketing for your forum.