| We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Managing Your Board; Advice and Tips | |
|---|---|
| Topic Started: Aug 18 2007, 01:30 PM (12,971 Views) | |
| OcelotJay | Aug 18 2007, 01:30 PM Post #1 |
<3 mine Miaow
|
Managing Your Board Help and advice on how to get the most out of your community! This guide is intended to provide tips and hints on how to attract new members and keep them, as well as advice on running your board efficiently. These are methods used by many communities out there - some are all encompassing and others are best utilised by specific types of boards. Please note now that we cannot guarantee these will work: ultimately it's down to you, your board and the people you attract to determine what works and what doesn't but it can't hurt to have a little help, can it? This does not deal with the mechanics of a board; some tips may include things you can do on your board and explanations how to, however the overall idea is to provide you with a bit of help on how to manage your forums. For assistance with the mechanics of operating InvisionFree software, please refer to the appropriate documentations. [Documentations Listing] In This GuideSubmit Your Ideas! I intend to update this as regularly as necessary to include new ideas and make any relevant changes. As such I'd be delighted for members to contribute. Whether you have an idea or want to share tips on how to run a board efficiently, would like to suggest an alteration to the existing ideas or want to offer some insight, criticism or comments - please do send me a Personal Message. My poor inbox is feeling unloved. If you're submitting a source, idea, hint or tip, try to be as clear about it as possible. Submitted ideas may be reformatted, edited or altered if accepted but supplying the text in as concise a manner as possible is greatly appreciated.  If you think something should be changed or removed, supply the exact text in QUOTE tags, offer possible replacement text and/or explain why you think it should be changed/removed. You are welcome to simply offer feedback or criticism too as this can help me greatly to improve this guide. The final decision for implementing changes - additions, deletions and alterations - lies with myself and the staff team and we cannot guarantee that all suggestions will be employed. I will do my utmost to respond to PMs and will aim to inform people if their suggestion has been accepted or rejected, and to provide reasons why for the latter. Many thanks to all staff and members who do submit suggestions. <3 Contributions This document was drawn up using methods I've personally implemented as an administrator, with the help of Brandon's excellent InvisionFree articles, observations made in and around communities and contributions from board owners. Many thanks to the following for their contributions: Edited by OcelotJay, Feb 5 2009, 08:30 PM.
|
 |
 
|
| OcelotJay | Aug 18 2007, 01:30 PM Post #2 |
|
<3 mine Miaow
|
Advertising An extremely effective means of bringing in new people and a path that provides a good option is advertising. If you advertise effectively you can pull in small clusters at first and eventually attract larger numbers. Search Engines and Directories An effective means of advertising (if done properly) is to submit your forum to one of the many search engines. Most of us use these things on a daily basis to hunt things out or just to trawl through what's out there so why not add yours to the pile? Directories Search Engines Paid Advertising Sometimes it pays to cough up a bit of money to advertise. There are currently plenty of InvisionFree forums with large traffic that offer paid advertising solutions (use the Board Directory to hunt them out) as well as third party websites such as Google Adwords (which is handy since InvisionFree uses Google Ads!). Alternative Methods Word of mouth is an extremely common form of advertising; by "spreading the word" to people, you can draw in new members easily. If your members are happy with your forum they're more likely to recommend it to others and this can seriously increase your numbers! So too can utilising forum signatures and "My Website" profile fields to advertise on other forums. Many places are happy with links in signatures and the allotted profile space so you'd be mad not to take up the chance on the forums you're active in. And you can implore your members to wear signatures or link to your community at forums they are members at. It is important, however, that you check the rules of any forum before doing this. If you violate advertising rules you may end up creating enemies and finding your URL is blocked by a number of forums. Equally, do NOT encourage members to advertise senselessly; advise them to be sensible and to heed rules! "Plug your forum" and similar services can also be found on boards. These are generally forums in which you can post an advertisement, free of charge typically but you may have to accumulate x posts before you can use it. Don't see this as a bad thing - it's an opportunity! You get to sell your forum and be active, thus allowing people to see what kind of person you are. People like to see personality so it doesn't hurt to make an appearance on other boards. Personal Messaging (PM) Advertising This is an absolute no-no. The majority if boards will treat PM advertising as spam and are very likely to warn and punish - including removing PM privileges and even filtering your board's URL. PM advertising is no different to spam emails; it's unwanted advertising that takes up space and simply grates on the recipient. It is highly inconsiderate to adopt this method and your board may gain a negative reputation for it (don't think communities are entirely separate: word gets around quickly if a pattern emerges). Remember: respect the rules of other boards and don't do anything that is a simple annoyance to others. It is one thing if someone requests a link to your board, it is quite another when you start PMing people out of the blue. Edited by Jory, May 16 2008, 11:34 AM.
|
|
|
|
| OcelotJay | Aug 18 2007, 01:30 PM Post #3 |
|
<3 mine Miaow
|
On-board Functions There are a number of things you can do on your board to attract and maintain members and this section focuses on how to best utilise board functions. Guests and Permissions If there's one thing that pops up in topics asking for help to gain members, it's the availability of the board to guests. A MAJOR turn-off for a lot (and I do mean a lot) of people is the Forced Login function. This requires all users to login (or register) before they can actually view the board. Now, if you're an exclusive little community that's fine, but if you're looking to expand and bring in new people you should really remove it. If there's no real reason to prohibit all guest access you shouldn't activate it.
Also, you should seriously consider allowing guests to view some forums. It's a common thing among boards to offer insight into what the board is about - why not allow guests to see the basic forums? Announcements, feedback, chat, games, etc. are all areas guests should be able to view. If you want to hide the main content of the forum then it's handy to set up a redirect forum visible only to guests that states there's more to be seen if they register, and a list of what they'll get access to. Be sure to make it sound exciting! You need them, they don't need you, so why should they choose you? What's unique about your board? What can you offer them? Consider these. Rules, Regulations, Do's and Don't's Every board requires its rules, and just what is considered worthy and what is excessive varies from person to person so know now that you'll never satisfy everyone. However, noticeable patterns in grumblings are unnecessarily strict rules and excessively long or complicated rules. When you create the board rules that will govern the entirety of your board you have to take into consideration what kind of board you want overall, what is allowed and what shouldn't be posted. You also have to think about the people you want to attract - young, old, mature, intellectual, fun, etc. Your rules have to reflect the nature of your board and the audience you're appealing to otherwise you might end up with the "wrong" people! Be wary of condescending remarks and scathing insults that are presumptive of the individual reading them. Rewarding language can actually be good - while you're laying down the law why not include positive words that stroke the person's ego and reinforce that by reading the rules, they're doing the right thing. If you instantly assume everyone is a rule-breaker and talk down to them you might grate on people. Don't be afraid to use a heavy hand if required but avoid slapping the innocents along the way; differentiate between the good, the bad and the unwanted. As your forum grows situations will occur that may affect your central rules and thus you can find the rules grow. What you may wish to avoid however is an essay of regulations. Remember: the main board rules should only be those that govern the whole board. Forum-specific rules can be left to pinned topics (link to them if need be). And it helps to explain them in as few words as possible. Keep them concise and clear and remove excess explanation. Special Recognition Some boards like to employ a form of exclusive membership. The most common is referred to as "elite membership", which is typically a special usergroup that is awarded to particular individuals for their contribution and loyalty. This can entice people to contribute quality posts, resources, etc. and may help the members feel as though they're wanted and that the staff appreciate their efforts. The other type is paid membership. To employ this successfully you will need to offer something in return; if people are going to spend money (even if it's just a dollar or two) it needs to be worth their time. Often these are used by large corporate-like boards that put money into their forums. You can offer exclusive content, better functions limited to that usergroup (uploads, avatars, etc.) and so on. You really need to be willing to invest in your board for this to work and so most opt for the first type. Competitions More and more people are beginning to realise just how competitive owning and running a board is. With so much choice out there the consumers are demanding more to keep their attention and so some forums are using competitions to keep people gripped. What kind is entirely down to the board and it should revolve around it's central theme but some examples are:
Domains Some believe that a forum will never reach its peak until it shows commitment to a rock solid future. Part of laying this foundation down can be to purchase a domain. It is preferred that the board owns its own domain, rather than free subdomains because the latter isn't unique. The cost for a domain varies in each host but it can cost as little as a few dollars a year.
As mentioned a few times, some things may cost money and it's down to you to decide whether or not you want to invest money. There is no denying that many of the largest and best websites typically put in some money towards various features however it is quite simple to maintain a steady and successful board without spending a penny. Always be careful about spending money: make sure you're willing to see it through to avoid wasting money and always shop around for the best deals if you're purchasing something. Edited by Jory, May 16 2008, 11:35 AM.
|
|
|
|
| OcelotJay | Aug 18 2007, 01:31 PM Post #4 |
|
<3 mine Miaow
|
This guide has been moved to our Documentation Wiki. http://docs.zetaboards.com/invisionfree/board/management Edited by Will, Jun 27 2009, 01:45 PM.
|
|
|
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · General Usage · Next Topic » |
2:14 PM Nov 22
