Not signed in (Sign In)

Internet & Tech: When is the best time to start a forum

1 to 5 of 5

  1.  
  1.  permalink

    I started a website a year ago with the goal of providing inspiration, guidance, and support for people that wanted to pursue a passion, but just didn't know how to go about doing so. It's come to a point where I believe including a forum, such as YGG's, will be most beneficial to our audience.

    My question is, when is the best time to start a forum?

    To better answer that question, my situation is as follows. In one month I will be hitting the road with the two other members involved with the site for a 90 day, 14,000 mile tour where we will be interviewing successful professionals to generate content for our site. During this time, we won't be as available to participate in our forum as we would if we weren't on the road. This worries me, because I know that for any forum to be successful, the founder has to actively participate.

    But on the other hand, the tour is expected to generate a significant amount of traffic our way, and I'm afraid that if we aren't offering something that interacts our audience besides written summarizations of our interviews, that they won't return. I also believe that having a forum available will provide our users with the kind of real time, applicable advice they are missing by reading an interview.

    So, the question is, can we get by in the first three months of launching a forum without active participation from its founders? Also, any technical aspects I should be thinking about?

  2.  permalink

    Great question. I currently do not run a forum, so this is just some thoughts coming from an outsider.

    Questions I would consider:
    -How soon are you leaving for your road trip?
    -Do you already have the forum designed and set up (basically ready to launch)? If not, will you have enough time before leaving for the tour to do so?
    -Do you have a strong consistent visitor base to launch it and have them be active in it?
    -What do your users think? Would they like a forum? Maybe a poll on your site or an email out to them (if you keep a subscription list) would generate some response.
    -Would you and your partners be able to devote a certain amount of time a day to just replying to posts on the forum, say an hour or two? Maybe in the evenings after all the interviewing and before heading to bed (for example)?
    -Have you considered starting the tour, posting some of the first interviews, and seeing what the response is? If you get lots of questions or comments on your site, then a forum would be a great way to open and continue the discussion.
    -Referring to above point, maybe you start the tour and after a month launch it so that it gives you and your partners a chance to see if you would have the time to dedicate to it?

    These are just some questions that I was thinking about while reading your post. Evaluating your situation and the visitor base that you have is probably going to be critical.

    Hope this helps!

    BTW, welcome to the site!

    Dorm Room Biz
    •  
      CommentAuthorTravis
    • CommentTimeJun 4th 2007
     permalink

    I agree, excellent question.

    A forum is a big investment in terms of time and expectations. Both of which are based almost entirely on your current situation.

    There will be a point in traffic and subscribers where a forum makes sense. It made sense for Steve Pavlina because of his site's size.

    When it comes to YGG, we pretty much reverse engineered this site. We started with a forum, then added a blog. Many others, including yourself, start the other way around.

    Maintaining it isn't too much of a challenge. It can be for those that use phpBB or vBulletin and have open registration (spam registrants and spam posts). We haven't had any problems with that whatsoever because of the approval process set by default in Vanilla.

    In the end, you should determine the amount of time and money it'll take to develop the forum, and how much time you have to populate, moderate and market it.

    For many bloggers, the comments in blog posts serve as a simple conversation tool that a forum normally would.

    John Chow asked his readers last week if they'd like a forum:

    http://www.johnchow.com/does-anyone-want-a-john-chow-dot-com-forum/

    and the comments were mixed, leaning a bit in favour of no.

    If you focus on making your blog the focal point of PtP, it'll encourage people to participate and keep the moderation simple.

    Original Young Go Getter
  4.  permalink

    Thanks for the input guys. I just check out Steve's forum, and man, he gets some serious traffic. 61,000 visitors a day will definitely increase the likelihood that a forum will prove successful.

    Pursue the Passion on the other hand is just getting our feet wet with the whole online traffic thing. We are averaging about 150 visitors a day, with about 70% of them being new visitors.

    The forum is Vanilla, and won't cost any additional dollars to get going. The only thing is time, and I really like the idea of launching it one month into the tour.

    It is ready to go, and I'm sure that our users will LOVE it. The main grumbling I've heard on our site is there isn't enough interaction, and interaction is something that is crucial in determing what to do with your life. This forum aims to provide that interaction.

    But I like the idea of testing out the number of comments we receive once the tour starts. Blog comments are a good measure of comments we'd receive in the forums...I think.

    Thanks again, I'm going to put a little more thought into this.

    •  
      CommentAuthorTravis
    • CommentTimeJun 5th 2007
     permalink

    I think you mentioned a while back that you were going to tape the tour on video instead of just audio this time around.

    I think that would encourage interaction and give people a reason to link to/talk about your site.

    If you add the forum and it doesn't take off, it's not that big a loss. If you're worrying about whether or not you'll have enough time to maintain it, you're worrying about something that most likely won't happen............and if it did, you should be proud.

    Toss the worries aside, launch the forum, prepare your blog for marketing, and fire away.

    Original Young Go Getter

1 to 5 of 5

  1.  

Rockstar Freelancer
Add your comments
    Username Password
  • Format comments as
 
Back to Discussions