Building a community

Build the Community, Then the Forum


Using a blog you can create a much more structured environment that is more likely to attract comments from your users. Every ‘topic’ is started by you with a new post and you’re actively inviting comments. This is the best way to find out which of your visitors are going to be posters and which are likely to remain silent. A blog should also be a good way of generating traffic and personally I would recommend you continue with the blog even when you have enough posters to set up a forum. If you can have blog posts linked to forum topics so that comments on your blog posts are seen as replies to the forum topic even better as that keeps up the stream of content being created in the forum.


Time for the Forum

The question of how many posters are needed to make a forum successful is a difficult one and will depend largely on the niche. I believe that if you typically receive ten or more comments to a blog post within a day or two of the post being made, without actively promoting the post, then you stand a good chance of being able to create a successful forum.

Once you are ready to set up your forum you need to be careful to avoid another trap which causes the death of many forums. You don’t want to split it into too many categories, when you first make the switch from blog to forum you may want to stick with just two categories; on topic and off topic. The more you divide your forum the quieter it will look to new visitors and the less likely they are to contribute. Remember, you can always add new categories later when you have more posters. Don’t be afraid to remove a category that doesn’t live up to expectations.

Having moved away from a blog to a forum try to maintain your posting habits in the forum. Remember that your core group of posters are there because they at one point wanted to discuss the posts you were making in your blog. If you take away your regular posts then you may also loose their contributions. If you manage the forum well in the beginning, and continue to promote it, then you should be able to reduce your contributions over time but you should avoid creating a feeling of abandonment at all costs.

In summary, forums do not create themselves, they require regular injections of content and above all they require an existing group of posters to get the forum started and support it as it grows. By encouraging people to reply to posts using a blog format you can ensure you have a core group of posters ready for when you make the switch to a forum.