How To Create A Forum For Your Website now
How to create a forum for your website now. Be it a business website or a personal blog, one of the main reasons for building a website is how to get to more people. If you want people to continuously visit your website often and often, if you want to make your website a place to go to, then building a forum around it will be a thing for you to consider. This is a big goal, but it is quite achievable and you can even go a step further by competing with the best websites outside there.
How to create a forum for your website now. Enabling this kind of communication on your website can go a long way which will be a very big advantage to your website. Building a forum means creating an active online community that allows users to interact with each other. In other words, a forum can become a valuable part of achieving your website goal.
Benefits of creating a forum for your website
Creating a forum does require a lot of extra work, but it is a good choice for your particular type of website. If done well, creating a forum can yield some important benefits.
Here are some of the benefits
- It provides a place for online communities to grow your website.
How to create a forum for your website now. Having a website that commands regular visitors is nice. One thing is that if all that you know about your website visitors is what you see in your Google Analytics, then it shows that you still don’t know a lot of things. Getting website visitors is never the same thing as having a community. A community is active and engages with your website regularly. The members of the community believe that they are part of something worthwhile. They have a higher level of interest than somebody who is just passing by. That makes them a partner in progress as they will add to the overall success of your website
- It gives the members a reason to keep coming back.
A lot of websites struggle with turning one-time visitors into regular visitors. Anybody who participates in your forum cares about what others in the forum have to say. As he wants to be part of the conversation, he wants to hear responses from others whenever he makes a post. For the conversation to keep flowing, members will automatically be coming back. How cool is that?
- It allows the opportunity to learn from one another
How to create a forum for your website now. You can not live enough to know everything. We learn every day. Your members can learn from each other as well as from you, you can as well learn from them. You need to work hard at the initial stage by providing them valuable content. As the community grows, you might find it difficult to answer every question. Sometimes, a member in the community may also have a better answer to the question anyway.
Giving community members access to each can be especially useful for any business be it products or services. The members can help each other whenever any member is having problems in one area or the other. We see this at work in the Bluehost forum. Whenever web hosting customers ask a question, another member answer the question proffering a solution to the problem instantly free of charge.
How to create a forum for your website now. New members get the help of more experienced members and long term members can distinguish themselves as helpful and knowledgeable in the community
- It will give you the ability to know the trending topics.
If you do content marketing, this is a big opportunity by letting you know the topics that are relevant to the community at that particular point in time. Looking at the questions and issues your audience has can translate into useful feedback on your website.
How to create a forum for your website now. Businesses spend a lot of money and time on market research to figure out what their audience needs. If you have an active online forum, all that you need to do is to follow the conversation. That is the information you need to determine the next line of action. Because of the discussion in the forum, you will know the topics your audience cares about and make sure your website provides the answer they are looking for.
- An open forum improves SEO.
We have two types of forums. There is a private forum and there is an open forum. If you go in the direction of a private forum, you will be losing this opportunity. Though private forums can make sense for businesses that want to create subscription communities or membership websites. If you can create a forum that can be accessed on the open web, then every new conversation your community members create means a new page that can be indexed by search engines. How good is that?
How to create a forum for your website now. The contents are regular and also fresh which is so good for SEO and for the fact that your forum continues to provide more and more content using the language of the forum audience, those forum pages could begin to show up search terms you have not even discussed on your website.
How To Create A Forum For Your Website.
Are you ready to set up your website forum? Here are some steps to get you started.
How to create a forum for your website now. You need to choose the right web hosting plan. Before you think of creating a forum on your website, it is so important to evaluate your web hosting provider if they are up to the task. If you can achieve your goal of building a community on your website, then you have to expect an uptick in traffic. It is therefore your job to make sure that the web hosting plan you are using can accommodate the forum software you are using. More so, there is going to be an increase in traffic. You need to take time to figure out if your current plan can do the work or not.
Another important point that is very related to the above point is to choose the right forum software. You will need software to create your forum. There is a lot of software outside there that one can choose from. We have the free and the paid plan software. But many of the most popular ones are free and open-source. Here are some of them.
phpBB.
MyBB
Flarum.
Take your time to do some research to choose the right one.
Create your forum.
How to create a forum for your website now. It is time for you to create your forum. If you have chosen the right software, it will not be difficult for you to create your forum at all. The software is there to do the job for you.
How to make your forum successful.
The purpose of creating a forum is to make it a success. To achieve this, you have to approach it with strategy. Here, I am suggesting seven good steps that one can take to achieve this.
(1) What is your forum’s theme?
What is your forum going to be known for? What is your forum going to be about? People want to know what they will be joining before they can decide if it is right for them or not. Before you discuss this in the forum. When you launch your website, you now need to ask yourself, what particular people will be discussing in your forum. You need to make some clarities about what particular topic people will be discussing. What is going to be your unique positioning statement? What is the difference between your website and the ones outside there? Why should people join your forum? All these questions you need to look into and proffer answers to. What topics and issues will they want to be discussing and the reasons they should do it on your website forum? Certainly, your forum theme should relate to what you discuss on your website. More so, get more specific in working out what the forum’s purpose and focus will be.
(2) Structure it out.
It is now the time to turn your theme into a clear structure. Decide on those categories and subcategories to divide your forum into. Your URL structures have to be laid down accordingly.
Discussions need to be organized into a few main topics for easy accessibility for members to find the information they need. Once again, you need to have your target audience at the top of your mind. Which categories will make the most sense to them in helping them find the information they are looking for? The structure you created, in the beginning, does not have to be permanent as it might require changes as time goes on. Depending on how people interact in the forum. Over time, you may find that adding new categories or rearranging the categories works better.
(3) Develop clear rules.
In any organization, there are rules and regulations. Therefore, yours should not be different. You may be thinking that your forum consists of the best people on the internet. Believe it or not, it is not so. This is the internet, where people behave behind the screen, some knowingly or unknowingly inevitably show their worse side.
How to create a forum for your website now. You can’t just launch your forum and hope for the best. You need to start planning for the worst. Think about how you want your forum conversation to look. Think of what you want and what you don’t want. Looking at the active comment sections around the web will show you examples of what you want your members to avoid.
Take time to review the rules of other forums on the web. It will help you get started.
Here are some of the examples you may want to include in your forum;
- Be respectful to one another in the forum even where there is disagreement.
- No share of discriminatory behavior.
- No name-calling.
- No link or recommendation of illegal items or activities in the forum.
- No spamming.
NOTE. Post the rules at the top of the forum where every member will see them. Let there be a note that every member who participates in the forum automatically agrees to and abides by the rules.
Part of the rule is to develop a process for what is going to happen to any member that breaks the rules. How many warnings will be provided before such a member will be banned? Are there any steps such a member can take before he can be reinstated?
For your rules to be worth much, you need to put a system in place to enact the consequences on any member that breaks them. Write out what that system will be and make it accessible to every member in advance to avoid problems later.
(4). Promote your forum.
People need to show up for discussion to happen. Create a method that will let people (your audience) know about your forum. Some of the methods used in promoting your website will also be applicable here.
Announce your new forum to your email list. Creating content promoting it on your website and social media. You may even go to the extent of paid advertising. Do whatever it requires to make your forum successful. Do this often until you have a decent number of members. This may take you weeks or some months, make sure you exercise enough patience.
(5). Create some good topics for discussion to get the conversation started. If you wait for another member to do this, you may wait till eternity. It is your job to get the ball rolling as soon as possible by creating a few conversations while the member getting comfortable. Have a few topics for discussion in mind and begin posting them to encourage others to follow.
Some forums also have a consistent weekly discussion where members can come together at an expected time to discuss any issue that bothered the forum. Members can come together at a particular point in time to discuss industry news, new member introductions, or other topics that your audience cares about.
(6) Moderate the discussions.
For any forum to be successful, moderation has to be given proper attention. Without moderation, you can fall into the hands of the so-called spammers. If the forum messages are dominated by the people that want to promote scams or any language that is not conducive for the well-being of members- then nobody is going to stay long in the forum. In the initial days of your forum, you may be able to handle the moderation by yourself. Open your two eyes on the active thread and react quickly to any that breaks the rules. Don’t be afraid to delete any comments that look inappropriate and issue warnings and ban such members if need be.
As time goes on, the work becomes too big, at this time you may need someone to help you in that area. Be careful here, because moderation can be very tricky. If the members feel that they are being penalized unfairly, you may face dissension. This is the reason having clear rules is so important.
(7). Ask for feedback.
It is not easy running a forum and at the same time, you are not going to be able to plan for everything in advance. You can not predict what a member will do or what issues will come up as the community grows. You can not be a loan ranger, you can’t do everything. Always ask for feedback and also for their input. Give them a sense of belonging. Make sure you listen whenever they make an input. Always be alert to any matter arising, and conduct surveys in the forum. Ask for people’s suggestions. Will there be any complaints? Definitely yes. Do something immediately about it. Keep on improving your forum. Do your best to find out how you can make it better.
