Promotion forums are a pretty popular forum niche in the online community. What is a promotion forum? A promotion forum is a forum or message board that offers advertising and other forum services such as: posting packages, forum reviews, member exchanges, etc. Basically a promotion forum provides services that help you gain members and posts as well as visitors.
Pros of Promotion Forums
Advertising
Most promotion forums allow members to advertise their forums on their website. Advertisements are good for your forum in the sense that they generate traffic to your forum. That traffic that comes from your advertisement may even generate new members, which leads to more content and activity on your forum.
Affiliates
Most forums, including promotion forums, offer affiliations. Basically, an affiliate typically includes an 88 X 31 banner that is visible somewhere on the main page of a forum and it links back to your forum. When people see your banner on other forums, they will likely click on it and view your forum. Like advertisements, this generates traffic to your forum. Typically, affiliations are a two way street. If your affiliate banner is included on another site, they will likely expect you to put their affiliate banner on your site.
Post Exchanges
A post exchange consists of members exchanging services amongst each other. Exchanges include, but are not limited to join for join, Active Member for Active Member, posts for posts, threads for threads, etc. Post exchanges generate traffic for your forum, help you to gain new members and content for either a short or long period of time.
Forum Reviews
Almost all promotion forums offer a forum review service. Generally, this service is completed by members of a review team and consists of a very detailed review of your forum. Forum reviews are designed to help you make your forum more appealing as many suggestions will be made to help better your forum.
Cons of Promotion Forums
Specific Member Types
Using promotion forums to gain members is harder than you think. Most users who are on promotion forums are doing the same thing you are: Hoping to gain members and activity for their forums. The problem with promotion forums is that the members of the forum are typically promoting the same niche. The amount of promotion forums advertised and promoted on promotion forums is ridiculous.
A lot of, or the majority of members of a promotion forum are looking for other promotion forums to advertise and promote their forums. If your forum is not about forum promotion, or another genre that the user is interested in, you may have a problem obtaining members, let alone getting them to remain active on your forum if they do join.
Pros and Cons at the Same Time
Posting Packages
A posting package is a service that many promotion forums offer their members. With a posting package, members of the staff team will join your forum and make a specific number of topics and posts on your forum per the request you have made. This is good because it helps your forum gain new members and it increases your post count and activity. This is also a bad thing because if you receive these packages, some of your members might not approve of such services, or the thought of paying for content on a forum. This may turn off guests from wanting to join as well as discourage members from posting on your forum.
Job Centers
A lot of promotion forums offer job centers, or job boards, for their members to announce when they are hiring for their forums. This is both good and bad for forums. Generally, this is good for your forum as you will likely find people who are interested in the positions that you announce. Typically, this is bad because even though people are interested in your job openings; they may not like the forum software you use, or they may be way under-qualified for the job you are offering. If you use promotion forum job boards to hire staff for your forums, make sure that you screen all applicants and be sure that they are very knowledgeable about the job they are applying for.
Conclusion
All in all, the pros of promotion forums outweigh the cons as there are more pros than cons. Generally, promotion forums are beneficial to forum communities as they help you make connections and meet new people. Ultimately, this leads to an increase in forum activity and members. Just be weary when using services, advertising and hiring staff via promotion forums.
Keeping members engaged on a forum is a hard job. All forum owners dream of running a successful and active forum. In order to do this, you need to keep your members interested and engaged in your forum. There are several ways you can do this. You can keep members interested and engaged in your forum by remaining active on your forum, creating new content daily, and offering something that other forums in your genre do not offer.
Remaining Active
It is important for administrators and staff team members to remain active on forums they own or work on. Visiting daily shows the current and potential members of your forum that support is available to them if they need it. They will notice if you are logging in and if you are posting on a regular basis. It’s sad to say this, but, set the example and your users will follow. This is more of a common sense thing.
As an act of being active; respond to your members posts, answer any questions that your users have and show interest in what your members have to say and or what they do. Always welcome new members to your forum and ask them questions to get them out of their shell. Follow up with your members to make sure they are doing alright.
By doing these things, you will show your members that you care about them and you value them. This will help get the members more engaged in your forum. It’s all about leading by example.
Create New Content Daily
Every day, each staff member, should create 3-5 new topics on your forum. New topics equal new discussions. New discussions equal member engagement. When members see new topics, or content to reply to, they are more apt to continue posting on your forums as they will have new discussions to partake in.
Ask your members for suggestions. If your forum has a debate board, create a thread for member suggestions on debate topics. Do the same thing for forum contests. When members see the staff of the forum is interested in what they would like to see, they are more apt to stay engaged and maintain an active status on your forum.
Offer Services/Options
Another way to get members engaged on your forum is to offer a service or option that other forums in your genre do not offer. For example, you can offer your members a member blog where they can post and share the link with their friends. If your community is a graphic design community, you could offer custom themes, custom graphics as well as fill requests for both.
Contests Promoting Engagement
A lot of forums offer contests to their members. One of the most popular forum contests is posting contests. Posting contests encourage members to compete against each other by posting and creating content on the forums. The member with the most additional posts from the contests beginning to the contests end will win the contest.
When running a contest, make sure you offer a prize that the winners will enjoy. For example: you can offer advertising space if your forum promotes advertising, or you can offer custom username styles, custom titles, more PM space, cash prizes and more. The more appealing a contest prize sounds, the more members will want to partake in the contest.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are several ways that you can get your members engaged on your forums. Though the ideas talked about in this article will help with that, there are several other ways to get your members engaged. Mainly, as a forum owner and administrator, you want to be an active member of your forum and so does your staff. You want to show interest in what your members have to say and you want to communicate with your members professionally and effectively. Creating content on a daily basis gives your members new discussions to respond to which gets your members engaged.
Have you ever wondered why every forum looks different? Forums look different based on the creator’s preferences of how they want their forum to look. Custom forum design is also based upon the forums niche, or genre. Custom designs are better for your forum because they attract members; they stand out from other forums and show guests and members that you are committed to your forum, as an administrator.
A good forum design and theme will attract a variety of members. If your forum design and layout is easy to navigate, guests will feel more welcome and they may even join. Your forum’s guests and members will notice the effort you put into your custom design and they will know that you are committed to your forum. Commitment is a very important quality that guests and members want to see in a forum owner/administrator.
If your forum has a custom design, it will stand out apart from other forums in the same and different niches. If your forum stands out amongst other forums, it will grab the attention of other forum owners. Make sure when you create custom designs; that you make sure it flows well with your forums topic. This means if your forum is about graphic design, you will want your custom design to represent that theme.
A custom design will attract potential members. Some members join a forum simply because they like the design of the forum. Other members join because they are familiar, or knowledgeable, with the forums topic, or niche. A good custom design is the starting base of a successful forum apart from the content that it features.
When you create a custom design, try to create something new; something that hasn’t been done before. Give your design something unique: Something that other forums in your genre do not contain. Experiment with options that you are not accustom to and continue to do so until you master it for your custom design. When I created ProBoards Admin Center, I had no idea how to complete a template modification of the thread list. I experimented with different options until I came up with a layout that I like.
In the custom design here on PBAC, I’ve added a sidebar with the current users stats, navigation links, forum staff, and I include newest member and the users online now part of the info center. I removed the users online now section and members section from the info center all together. I changed the thread layout inside boards to include the avatar of the threads creator just before the thread title, description and created by information. I also changed the username option for last post to a miniature avatar.
A few other custom designs I included are the blog page, a drop down menu for the blog, and several databases. All of these custom options are not generally used on other forums. Some of the options will be considered, by others, as nifty and original. You want your forum to be original and not mimic other forum designs.
Custom designs are better for your forum because, as stated previously, they make your forum stand out apart from other forums and they attract members. The most important reason that custom designs are better is because a custom design shows prospective members that you, as a forum owner/administrator, are committed to your forum. Why would you go through all that work and frustration to just give up on your own forum?
Custom designs equals committed staff while committed staff equals committed members. When your members and staff are committed to your forum, the activity of your forum will increase and so will your member base.
It's time for our very first forum contest! Guess what? It's a posting contest. A posting contest consists of members competing against each other to obtain the most posts over a course of specific time. All members and staff members are encouraged to participate in this contest. If you wish to participate, please review the contest's guidelines below:
How it Works
This posting contest will work based on the number of posts that a member starts with when the contest begins. If you wish to participate in this contest, simply reply to this thread with your current total post count. At the end of the contest period, the member who has increased their post count the most will win the contest.
Participation Eligibility
In order for a member to remain eligible to win this contest, the member must remain active during the entire run of the posting contest. The member's posts should be written in 2-3 complete sentences and must use relatively correct grammar. The administrator will be checking your posts periodically throughout this contest and if your posts do not meet the criteria, you will be disqualified from the contest and unable to win.
To participate in this contest, reply to this post with your current post count after 12:00am EST on the contest's start date (Friday, February 06th, 2015). On the last day of this contest; Friday, March 06th, 2015, you will reply to this post again with your current post count. You must wait until the last day of the competition to make your second reply. Your second reply must be posted by 11:59pm EST time in order to be eligible.
Contest Dates
This contest will begin on Friday, February 06th, 2015 at 12:00am EST. The contest will run its course for the duration of one month and will end on Friday, March 06th, 2015 at 11:59PM EST.
Prizes
3rd Place
The member who comes in third place will receive a modified username of bold for a total of one month. This will make their name standout amongst other members.
2nd Place
The member who comes in second place will receive a modified username of a color of their choice for one month (that is not a staff color). This will make their name stand out amongst other members. The member will also receive a custom title of their choice that will remain permanent unless they win a title change.
1st Place
The member who comes in third place will receive a modified username of a color of their choice for one month, a custom title of there choice that will remain permanent, and their own custom blog board and page (this will be explained in detail at a later time).
