How do you compete with Reddit and FB Groups?

[asymmetricinfo]

Reddit and FB groups are tough competitors for forums - I don't think anyone here would disagree with that. Short of having a forum with a lot of existing momentum, loyal users, etc., how do we compete with them?

I've put together a list of ideas / strategies that I plan to try once my forum is live, but would love to hear from other members.

My ideas so far:

- Leveraging the popularity of FB by implementing oAuth (i.e. login with FB, login with google) options... The easier you make it for users to sign in / sign up, the better.

- Having a strong user onboarding module... I found this addon (https://xenforo.com/community/resources/user-onboarding.7843/) and I plan to try implementing it to get new users to engage at a higher rate. Note that I haven't actually tried the addon so I can't speak to its quality, but I like the idea

- Putting new users on an email journey / drip campaign.... e.g. introducing them to the best posts on the forum, encouraging them to contribute, and ultimately asking them to invite their friends (this addon looks good for this: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/referral-contests-2-by-siropu.6220/)

- Sending daily or weekly email digests of recent threads / posts (I like the look of this addon: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/threadloom-newsletter-for-xenforo-2-x.7096/)

- Putting in gamification and/or some kind of user reputation / credits system... Something like https://xenforo.com/community/resources/addonflare-xf2-awards-system.6974/ and https://xenforo.com/community/resources/dbtech-dragonbyte-credits.5871/ to encourage members to stick around... Reddit has something called 'karma' points for this reason.

- Customising my forum so that it's 'personalised' for my specific niche as much as possible... For example, tailoring my forum's emoji's and reaction icons so that they suit my niche perfectly. Also, allowing users to customise parts of their experience, e.g. https://xenforo.com/community/resources/th-covers.6493/


Basically, my thinking is that FB and Reddit have good horizontal integration... In other words, they're a good place to have fairly superficial discussions on a very wide variety of topics.

The only way for forum owners to compete is to go as 'vertical' as possible, i.e. making your forum THE place to be for a very specific niche.

As I said, I haven't even launched my first forum yet so all this is purely theoretical Would be interested to hear what others' thoughts on the matter are, especially those who have launched a successful forum in the post reddit / fb world.

 

[RandallC]

depends on the topic..... Guns and firearms - Facebook allows discussion but no sales. I am using my forum as a marketplace and slowly building the discussions when people join.

 

[l3ta]

 

[Fullmoon]

Reddit and FB groups are tough competitors for forums - I don't think anyone here would disagree with that. Short of having a forum with a lot of existing momentum, loyal users, etc., how do we compete with them?

I've put together a list of ideas / strategies that I plan to try once my forum is live, but would love to hear from other members.

My ideas so far:

- Leveraging the popularity of FB by implementing oAuth (i.e. login with FB, login with google) options... The easier you make it for users to sign in / sign up, the better.

- Having a strong user onboarding module... I found this addon (https://xenforo.com/community/resources/user-onboarding.7843/) and I plan to try implementing it to get new users to engage at a higher rate. Note that I haven't actually tried the addon so I can't speak to its quality, but I like the idea

- Putting new users on an email journey / drip campaign.... e.g. introducing them to the best posts on the forum, encouraging them to contribute, and ultimately asking them to invite their friends (this addon looks good for this: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/referral-contests-2-by-siropu.6220/)

- Sending daily or weekly email digests of recent threads / posts (I like the look of this addon: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/threadloom-newsletter-for-xenforo-2-x.7096/)

- Putting in gamification and/or some kind of user reputation / credits system... Something like https://xenforo.com/community/resources/addonflare-xf2-awards-system.6974/ and https://xenforo.com/community/resources/dbtech-dragonbyte-credits.5871/ to encourage members to stick around... Reddit has something called 'karma' points for this reason.

- Customising my forum so that it's 'personalised' for my specific niche as much as possible... For example, tailoring my forum's emoji's and reaction icons so that they suit my niche perfectly. Also, allowing users to customise parts of their experience, e.g. https://xenforo.com/community/resources/th-covers.6493/


Basically, my thinking is that FB and Reddit have good horizontal integration... In other words, they're a good place to have fairly superficial discussions on a very wide variety of topics.

The only way for forum owners to compete is to go as 'vertical' as possible, i.e. making your forum THE place to be for a very specific niche.

As I said, I haven't even launched my first forum yet so all this is purely theoretical Would be interested to hear what others' thoughts on the matter are, especially those who have launched a successful forum in the post reddit / fb world.

Great ideas! @asymmetricinfo

Wondering if you launched your forum yet?

You are 100% right about making sure your forum is the de-facto ultimate without question place to be for your niche. As long as the niche isn't too broad we might have a fighting chance against FaceBook.

Facebook groups are just a stream of noise. There's no depth, no community. It's a bunch of people that do the same thing yelling at one another.

 

[drastic]

lol you don't.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Better, more organized content.
Unfortunately, xenforo threads aren't designed to generate what you need. In fact xenforo's non-threaded threads makes this problem worse for forums.

Reddit has a lot of threads.

You want better more curated information.

 

[Danny88]

For me FB Groups, Telegram Group/Channel and recently launched Whatsapp Channel are really tough competition for our community. A lot of members redirecting each others out of forum and start separating discussions into their private channel based on their interests. Our community is dying, leaving only members whose interests in general chat. Don't think could hold another 5 more years.

 

[Suzanne O]

You don't as they're both a load of rubbish when it comes to social media.

Xenforo is a forum software. It's not a social media outlet.

 

[Suzanne O]

You can get catfished on both Reddit and Facebook.
people asking for friend requests are real dodgey.
Just like the scammers you get on threads, instagram, and patreon.

On a normal forum you will have a better way of controlling these imbeciles that keep annoying you.

 

[CedricV]

You don't as they're both a load of rubbish when it comes to social media.

Xenforo is a forum software. It's not a social media outlet.

You have a point.

Can’t believe I just said that.

 

[Dragapult]

I've rarely, if ever, found good discussion on Facebook. It's an echo chamber that mainly consists of endless talking points. Reddit can be a place for good discussion if you find the right sub, but it's also a lot like Facebook in it can easily be overrun by spammers, trolls, etc. Forums have always felt much more focused to me. Perhaps better moderation, I don't know. But I do know a proper forum is where I will generally try to make serious posts and discussion. On places like Facebook and Reddit, I mainly just lurk, and when I do post, I rarely take it seriously.

 

[Alpha1]

Without some form of social groups / clubs, it will always be hard to compete with Facebook Groups, SubReddits, Discord Groups and other Social Groups. Members will need to be able to create their own groups / clubs.
This would need to be implemented in order to be able to compete:

Missing: Social Groups + Group-forums

XenForo is great as it is, but I think one of the Core-Features which are still missing are some sort of "Groups" so that users can associate themselves to certain Groups. Maybe also having Group-Forums for each of those Groups ? For example, XING.com is using Group-Forums (public or...

xenforo.com

Social Group functionality needs to be core, so that addon developers can extend it. Soon after XF would release such functionality we would see addon developers releasing things like Blog, Chat, Wiki, Calendar, Shop, etc for Social Groups.
That would never happen for 3rd party social group addons. Addon developers are generally not going to extend the addons of other addon developers.

 

[Danny88]

You can get catfished on both Reddit and Facebook.
people asking for friend requests are real dodgey.
Just like the scammers you get on threads, instagram, and patreon.

On a normal forum you will have a better way of controlling these imbeciles that keep annoying you.

Only minority cares but majority of internet users doesn't care. So social media still win and will get rid of forum slowly.

 

[Suzanne O]

Only minority cares but majority of internet users doesn't care. So social media still win and will get rid of forum slowly.

A forum is not social media

 

[thegx.ca/forum]

I’m using Mastodon and PeerTube instead of those big companies but with limited results so far…just being patient too of course

 

[Suzanne O]

I use facebook and threads and instagram. That's enough for me.

Reddit is a load of garbage that needs to be taken out when the garbage truck next comes.

 

[Wing]

I agree. But people still won’t turn back to forum since more types of social media and messaging will evolve.

What if forums were to innovate, and incorporate some new ideas that made the other social outlets and networks so attractive to the new generations?

 

[Arnox]

We offer a few things that other sites either cannot or will not offer.

- Offshore hosting. Ensures resistance against DMCA attacks and other like threats.

- Universal focus. We are a general-purpose forum. Post about any subject. We have a sub-forum for everything.

- NO reputation/upvote/downvote/thanks/likes/etc. systems. We believe that these systems are useless at best and harmful to discussion and the community at worst.

- Although we definitely have rules, they are extraordinarily clear and lean. We do not harass our members with restrictions that, in the end, do not matter. The spirit of free speech is huge for us.

- Guest posting. People can make a post or a thread on our site without ever having to make an account. All posts and threads made this way must go through a moderation queue first though for obvious reasons and have other restrictions on them as well.

- On our 10th anniversary, we will be giving everyone active on the site 15 GB of free cloud storage to do with what they will. No strings attached. As long as they follow our rules, it's theirs.

- And, of course, we offer all this through XenForo systems. I've been a cheerleader for XF for a very long time now. They offer an amazing product both for end-users and for admins. Although I could think of some things I would really like out of it, in the end, I'm proud to use their software.