Tips for increasing user participation in your forum (Basic SMF theme)

[Woraphat]

All of the info below is related to the basic SMF forum theme, pretty much just like the theme that this forum is using.

I thought I would share a few things I do to try to increase user participation in my forums.  While the tips I offer may not directly increases the number of posts in my forums, I believe it does increase the number of people who sign into the forum to view it.  I think an increased number of Users Online viewers does help to give my forums a more "active" look and that in turn enhances people's interest in the forums.

First item is the number of Recent Posts at the bottom of the forum home page.  I limit that to the latest three posts.  I believe three is just enough to give people the idea that there is current activity on the forum and is a teaser to get them to look further for more recent posts.

Second is Users Online time.  I have that set for two hours and it helps me to maintain a fair number of Users Online showing and that contributes to my "active" forum theme.

Third is I have removed the View the most recent posts on the forum link at the bottom of the home page in the Forum Stats section.  I found that many people just clicked that and ran through all of the recent posts without signing in.  Steering them to sign in and use the Show unread posts since last visit link at the top of the page definitely increased the number of users who sign in and it helps with getting people to sign up as members so they would be able to access that function.  Show unread posts since last visit is the most used link on my forums.

Fourth is I have set the forum permissions to disallow guests from viewing attachments.  A lot of photos get posts to my forums and curious people will sign in to see the attached photos.  While linked pictures using sites such as Photobucket, etc are visible to everyone, most of my members just attach their pics instead of using photo storage sites.  Therefore, more than half of the photos are attached and people have to be signed in to see them.  People DO sign in when they run across a post that includes attached photos.

Fifth is we have added a few special forum menu buttons on the main menu.  One example is a button that links directly to the local weather radar and it opens in a new tab when clicked.  The button is available for members but not for guests.  Menu buttons that work for members only is another incentive to sign up and sign in.

Sixth is a forum FaceBook page that we periodically post teasers and forum links on.  We don't put actual forum posts on the FB page but instead we put a short description of a thread that may be of interest to a large number of people and then we put the link to the actual thread.  Using StatCounter to see what links are bringing people to our forum, we can see that this does bring in a respectable amount of traffic and does increase the number of signed in people and sometimes brings new members.  Some times people ask questions on our FB page or ask for help and we answer with a suggestion to go to the forum and ask and receive a broad range of answers from various members instead of just what our FB guy thinks the answer should be.  We don't answer question on FB.

For folks using the basic theme, I would be interested to know what tips you are using to increase participation in your forum.

[landyvlad]

I'm bumping this thread as it is a question that is asked periodically and worthy of further discussion.

[Steve]

I'm bumping this thread as it is a question that is asked periodically and worthy of further discussion.

That's not actually a desired action here. Bumping a thread solely for the purpose of trying to create further discussion is viewed as spam and is frowned upon. I'm not aware of how the other support team members feel about it but to me it's just a post count increase action.

[landyvlad]

Sorry Steve, that was certainly not my intention. As you can see from my post number, most of the posts I've done have been of value to either me or others.  It just seems to me that quite a lot of posts in this "Building Your Community and other Forum Advice" board aren't directly related to that - and I found this to be a good thread on the matter at hand, and it was buried where it wouldn't be readily seen.  Anyway feel free to remove any/all of the posts after the OP if you like. 

[Arantor]

I think the fact that the OP didn't generate any interest in replies tells you something.

[Irisado]

For the reasons Steve has given, combined with the fact that there are more recent topics and a sticky about how to increase participation on forums, this topic can be locked.