Online discussion communities and other BBS systems can be a great way to connect people with similar interests. By following a few simple steps, you can create a thriving online community which will allow you and the other members to have very entertaining discussions.
Steps
Step 1. Pick a specific topic for the community
If you plan to manage the community yourself, pick something you know about and are interested in. Due to the large number of existing online communities, it is best to serve a well-determined niche. For example, "Buddhist Republican Forum" will work better than a "Religion and Politics Forum".
Step 2. Select where you are going to host it
On your own or external server? If you have web space and a lot of experience in web development, you can develop your own online community using software for this purpose. If you are unable to set up your own hosting, you can use one of the remote hosting services available such as EZboard, or Proboards. Make sure to host your forum on a good server because you don't want it to spend more time offline than up and running. Get a community management software so that you can satisfy all the needs and desires of your users.
Step 3. Create your forums (discussion areas)
Ideally, you will want 5-10 separate forums, each of them handling a certain topic or group of topics. For example, you can have a "General Discussion" forum, a "Science" forum, a "Political Discussion" forum, and so on. Try not to make too many categories. Ask yourself if each sub-forum you add will make the community better by facilitating new topics or if it will hurt by dispersing the content too much and forcing users to have to search a lot for the content they are looking for.
Step 4. Advertise your community
If you have friends online with similar interests, send them a quick email to let them know about your "grand opening." If you have a web page, announce the new community to visitors. Whatever you do, avoid spamming (advertising to strangers without their consent. "You can add information about your community to your profile as a" signature. "So when you post, people will see it.
Step 5. Select the moderators
Each separate discussion forum within your community must have its own moderator. The moderator keeps discussions fresh by starting new topics and removing inappropriate content. Community users who are knowledgeable about the subject topics of the forum and who want to spend a few minutes a day helping the community grow will be good moderators.
Step 6. Manage the community
You and the moderating team should agree on some basic rules of conduct (such as "no personal attacks"), and enforce them. Occasionally, you may need to ban (kick) an annoying user from your community to avoid problems.
Step 7. Make strategic alliances
Exchange links with other communities that have similar interests to help the user database grow. As your community grows in size and activity, you will have more opportunities to create strategic alliances with other websites.
Step 8. Over time develop an atmosphere of community
You need to foster a sense of loyalty and "belonging" among your members or they will eventually go elsewhere. Games, contests, custom titles for users, and other "tricks" work well, but kindness and respect are even better.
Advice
- You could have a site for users to forward spam and post junk mails: for most forums, it's going to happen anyway, so it's best to make a sub-forum where the agent can do it without being distracted from the forum content. principal.
- Don't expect success overnight. It takes time to build a group of users of a certain size and assets. Keep going, and sooner or later you can get it. It may take years for the debating community to function on its own.
- Adapt the rules and standards to the subject of your choice. For example, a religious community will likely have stricter rules than one about making pranks on the phone. The standards in your community should never be too strict or too lax for your audience.
- Keep the forum support team as well as the number of forums proportional to the size of the community. If you only have 30 members, you don't need 20 moderators or fifty forums. Add them only when necessary - you shouldn't include people as part of the team just because they are your friends, or because they ask you to, nor should you create a dedicated Poké.mon forum in a political debate community just because you like games..
Warnings
- If you choose to host the forum on an external service, it could happen that this company or these people force the forum members to see advertising. This is the case with most free discussion forums. Generally by paying a small amount these ads can be removed. However, sometimes you can find free discussion forums that don't force you to watch ads. Choosing an ad-free server will give your forum a more professional appearance that your visitors will enjoy.
- As a community manager, you should be prepared to face a bit of harassment sometimes. Uncomfortable users are a negative point of life on the Internet, and many of them do not take well about being expelled from a community. If you are very sensitive to criticism, it might be better to let someone else run the community.