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If you are tasked with managing a forum, congratulations to you. If you find yourself weighed down by mundane management tasks, you are not alone. Let’s examine some essentials to help you run an effective and vibrant message board community without the hassles of micromanagement.

1. Find a forum you like and stick with it. Yes, not everyone will be using vBulletin or one of the other wonderful PHP or ASP message board sites. If you like EZBoard or if you like making your own site up with PHP open source, then do it and stick with it. By now you know the pitfalls of the particular sites; can you really afford to regularly change to the latest and greatest technologies? Probably not, unless your site is already generating plenty of income through Google AdSense or similar types of PPC advertising. I am not saying to never update your site, rather weigh the costs of whether your site has to have a certain site or feel to be successful. Even ugly sites can prosper, witness Craig’s List!

2. Find moderators who want to moderate. Not everyone who volunteers to moderate a particular forum on your message board is fit for the task. Some will sign up and then not moderate; better to go without a moderator then to have a “name in place.” Keep your standards high and only the best will volunteer.

3. Envision long term. Unless you plan on rapidly growing your forum and then “flipping” it in a quick sale, you are better off looking at keeping your site for many years. Yes, in the land of the internet, everything changes so rapidly; still there are forums that can and do thrive the longer they are online, with proper management of course!

4. Reward your core constituency. Chances are your site is dominated by a small group of people who post regularly and are generally most helpful overall. Consider having a private forum viewable only to them on your site. Out of this group will likely come your moderators; run contests for this group only. Find advertisers to fund the prizes.

5. Ignore the squeeky, vocal minority. Yes, there will be the small amount of people — usually less than 10% of your members — whose demands on your time far exceed what is normal. They are the ones who want extensive hand holding and technical assistance…if they would only read previous threads or pay attention to announcements, your problems with them would be resolved. As much as it cuts against the grain for some administrators [heck, you are all about helping people, right?], you must cut them loose. You need not do it directly, but by not promptly answering their questions they will either figure things out themselves or move on.

6. Be well funded. Have a treasure chest or Paypal donation box on your site to welcome contributions. Run banner ads and join a successful PPC program. Find an advertising plan that works well for you. Seek grant money if your site is geared toward helping raise awareness about a particular health or social issue. You want to reap some monies from your site and you should pay yourself for your hard work.

Not all forums are meant to succeed on the internet, nor should they. The successful sites are well managed and positively impact members and guests far beyond the internet. If you have one of these sites, congratulations and good management to you!

Matt runs two successful forums which can be viewed at http://aviationemploymentboard.net/forum and http://corporateflyer.net/forum

1. Your signature file:

Most of the forums allow you to carry a 4 - 6 lines of signature files with your name. So these files appears below your name when you answer a forum thread.

Most people advertise about their product. Don’t do that. Always offer some free ecourse or trial product. Personally I prefer to offer free ecourse than an ezine because, we feel that we gain more in short course of 7 days rather than a chain of endless ezines.

Second you can offer free product or free trial software or free membership.

Always hyperlink the email or web page link, so simple click will take the reader to the destination page.

2. Use the section ‘Special offers to Forum Members’ Forum:

You may see a seperate forum like ‘Special discount to Forum members’. Here you can advertise your product or offer special discounts to forum members.

Tips while posting in these type of forums-

• Add an image of your product.

• Use the html code to highlight the benefits.

• Hyperlink the web page or product link.

• State your discount in bold letters.

3. Seek partners for joint ventures:

Choose a forum appropriate for your product or business. For example if you are selling reseller hosting service then choose web designers forums.

Most web designers prefer to host their clients on own servers, so there will be more chances for you to get partners here.

Tips on seeking joint ventures-

• Let your partner get equal benefits from your proposal.

• Be polite in asking partnership.

• Leave the selection or decision making to the person whom you are going to ask a joint venture.

• 1 or 2 emails. If you didn’t get any response, no more emails. May be he/she doesn’t like these type of ventures.

4. Banner advertising or sponsoring:

Some forums sell advertising space and look for sponsors to sponsor the forum categories. If you want to act as a sponsor, you pay them like monthly or yearly and they put your web site or product link on the forum index, at the sub forum you choose.

This sponsoring is very cost effective way of advertising than banner advertising.

For example, you are selling search engine ebook. You can sponsor the sub forum ‘Search engine promotion’ in the list of forums. Your ebook link will be placed on that category of forums.

About The Author

Radhika Venkata

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