Just starting your forum? Is traffic starting to pick up? Here are a few tips to help your guest and members to feel welcome and continue to keep them coming back.

Make guest feel welcome:

Make sure you have some kind of welcome header installed. You want to let guest feel welcome and let them know why they should join. You need to offer them something besides reading and responding to post and communicate privately with other members. Like an e-book, free downloads of some sort, or something along those lines.

One thing also to do is sign out of your own forum and look at it as a guest. Is it easy to find the registration button? Is it clear what your site is about? Do you have good descriptions on where members should post their question?

Right after they join:

Send them a welcome email AND a private message welcoming them to your forum. In both of these, let them know where the rules are located, invite them to create a welcome thread and where to do so, also let them know how they can get a hold of you personally if they have any questions or problems.

If you are planning on sending out newsletters, ask them to add your newsletter email address (ie newsletter@yoursite.com) to their email safe list. This way your newsletter doesn’t end up in their junk mail.

What you can do as an Admin:

ALWAYS! Use your real name; do not use Admin or your Nickname. You want to personalize your forum and make users feel welcome. By using your name you will achieve this.

To start your forum out; you should be making at least 10-15 threads/post per day and keep posting, everyday! I know this maybe hard to do, but guests need to read and see something interesting before they will join. I know this is a no-brainer, but when a guest shows up on your site and see that the last post was last week or more, they will simply move on.

Make sure when a new member joins and starts a welcome thread, you respond and ask them a question so they come back to answer. (i.e. Is that near xxxxxx?, I have a friend that lives around there) This will also make it easier for them to break the ice. Also don’t be afraid sometimes ask them how they found your forum. This is helpful to know where your traffic is coming from.

After the welcome:

When a member posts a question always try your best to answer it, if you don’t know the answer, forward the thread to someone else, this could be a staff or a regular member that will be able to help. Try and answer within a short amount of time, this way when they have another question they will think of your forum immediately.

After you or another member answered the post, ask them if that helped or did it work. Again this way they will hopefully come back to post a follow-up.

I know of a couple of forums that sends a 6-month reminder to members who haven’t posted on their forum. Again this is a great reminder if someone registered at your forum and forgot to bookmark it. You could also do a “mini” newsletter letting them now how many members you have now, as well as post and threads made since the last visited.

Their message includes: "We've noticed that you registered but haven't posted yet and want to make sure that you aren't having technical difficulties. If there is anything we can do, please let us know by emailing us at admin@yoursite.com

Send a Forum Newsletter:

Forum newsletters are great ways of letting your members know what is going on at your site. I recommend these at least once a month, not any more, if you send them too much, people will put it off as junk mail.

Give your newsletter some real content. Announce something new to the site; like a staff member, a contest, a new sub forum, etc. Something needs to peak their interest. Threads and post alone are not going to get them to come back.

I personally try and have the latest threads in the newsletter, not the most viewed or ones with the most replies, since most of these could be from older threads dating back to the start of your forum. Remember you want members bringing fresh threads to your forum.

Make sure to include why they have received the newsletter and where they can unsubscribe the setting in their user control panel, if they choose to.

And Finally

Remember if it is your passion. Keep with it, don’t give up!

Most, if not all forums, we’re not successful overnight.

Just follow a few of these steps and will have a successful forum.