Have you guys ever come across a new idea or two to try to build up new hype for your communities? If so, what have you done? Did the hype work - or did it fail?

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Yeah...hype is good. We've had 3 notable events that have created hype at AF.



The first was during the beginning of 2006. That's when we released PostFusion. It created a buzz initially, and perhaps more importantly is the fact that it's also created some long-term, repeat activity.

Next comes mid-2006. These were our two mergers. Our first was with Best-Board and second with WhichBB. These were huge. The first one with Best-Board created the most buzz.

Another thing that created a buzz was our $2,500 anniversary contest. That's the next spike in 2006, Quarter 3.

It's quite easy to create hype...There are lots of ways to do it, most of them require one of three things (or a combination of them all)

1) Money
2) Time
3) A unique idea

That said...You'll also notice in our graph that traffic decreased and remained steady in 2007. That's because we haven't done anything big other than "keep on chuggin". Most hype fades with time unless you continue to revive it. This is not a bad thing if you are pleased with steady activity, but if you wish to maintain those up in the cloud highs, then you've got to stay fresh with new things to create hype.

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Ya, that's because the merger was posted around everywhere. I still wonder where everyone went though.

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I defiantly suggest building hype w/e you can.
Submit to prweb, and get some groups that can submit to 100's of social networks.
I try to build hype with every contest.

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Its always good to build hype for a contest otherwise you won't be getting what you want out of the contest which is members.

A well promoted hype can pay off for your site/forum.

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I need to work on this. I'm running a Silent Auction right now.
Any suggestions on what I could do to build hype?

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yes id agree with all the comments above, its very important to create new hype and keep on getting new users back to your forums, it is very easy for a forum to go 'stale' which is something you dont want.

but at the same end you done want to have too many competitions otherwise people will get sick of them.

i would say a maximum of 4 competitions every year, so 1 every quarter is about right, and one of these competitions you need to somehow involve people in getting new members to the forum...

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If you have the money, why restrict yourself to 4 competitions every year? i would run one each month as it would bring a heck of alot more members in and keep them really motivated to post.

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