Are your Forums Active as before?

[zooki]

Hi many of us have had forums for many years, from before FB. Are your forums as active as before? Or do you find it difficult fighting against users spending time in Twitter, Facebook (where they can chat, discover content, and discuss etc).

Once upon a time, a forum could be made for a given topic, now FB pages, Twitter accounts have sprung up. What have you done to combat user lethargy? How have you kept up, or are times a changing?

 

[craigiri]

Times are only changing for "chat" forums.....that is, facebook and twitter conversations seem to come and go quickly. For that type of thing, forums will likely not work now...or in the future.

But for solid and searchable content, forums are the only option. Try finding out where to get parts for a 1962 corvette or old mustang on twitter or facebook....

 

[LuvMeSumZen]

I agree with Craig. If your content focus is unique, or even popular and your forum has a unique flavor to it that sort of sets it apart, your growth can still be steady IMO. I am certainly not a seasoned forum admin but am doing okay with my forums because of a unique slant to a fairly popular though pretty focused topic. I'm not sure what kind of topic/s your forum focuses on but if you integrate with FB and twitter it can actually bring you members. Recently we started getting a higher than average reg's and I later discovered that one of our members asked his 1500 FB followers to like our page. That brought us a significant jump enrollment over a 10 day to 2 week period, and that was just a single member of my forum that did that. On top of that, those that registered were our target audience. .

 

[DRE]

Mine's slow but too busy playing GTA Online to care.