When I checked my forum stats, I saw that people join, post one or two replies and then leave. but inviting their friends? I haven't seen that happen. Meanwhile, I have a referral bonus in place. It seems everybody was just consuming and leaving. Sometimes I feel like focusing on organic growth alone. What do you think?
This is the secret trick, yes?
Years ago, my first forum, I got really lucky to have a steady 20-ish members posting consistently over the period of months. Reflecting on how I could reproduce this, I realized that most of these members were friends or knew each other from real life. They were all high school students, probably attending the same school.
Now, the question I asked myself is, why did all these “friends” join MY forum? It was an anime/role playing forum, much like what I have right now. All these teens enjoyed role playing with one another, or they were fans of the very specific anime that my forum presented. So there’s the answer. You have to have topics on your forum that people are interested in.
I haven’t quite figured out how to market my new forum to attract people who are interested in the hobbies that my forum features. Most kids these days are on Social Media. Extreme short-form posts are the rage right now. Because let’s face it, writing posts on a forum can be a lot of mental work. Sometimes research is needed to back up what you’re discussing. Forum posts tend to be much longer. They also don’t vanish into the ether of time, unlike Social Media posts tend to do after a few days.
In my observation, most of the people who visit forums are older people. GenX, Millennials, maybe the occasional Boomer— I’ll admit, that I despise breaking people down into these demographic labels. But, it comes in handy when talking about marketing, because groups of people broken down by demographic like this also helps to isolate the various interests these people have.
So, what does this mean? Take a look at your forum. What are the topics that you’re featuring? Do they align with the topics that people within these demographics have interest in?
Another thing you can do, is people are motivated by receiving something in return for energy expended in doing a task. If you’re looking to attract members’ friends, then you need to figure out something that would motivate people to bring their friends into your forum. That being said though, also look at how people are living in modern society. We’re all individualized. The idea of community is becoming more foreign with each passing day. So people having real-life friends is becoming rare too.
Getting members to invite their friends is difficult. Even with referral bonuses, people will still not do it. But I honestly believe in creating a community that people would want to share willingly.
You really can’t.
I suggest just occasionally emailing/alerting your members and asking them to invite a friend if they know of any.
Try not to be intrusive about it. Try not to beg.
If they can help you, they will. If not, they won’t.
Spark Promotion