asymmetricinfo
Member
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.
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.
