Tip #39: How to Turn Your Forum into a Thriving Community

Many membership sites owners who start a closed members only forum struggle to turn their forum into a thriving and active one where new threads and posts are added on a regular and frequent basis.

In this post we:

1. Go over 5 useful tactics that will make you achieve just that – A thriving and active forum where new threads and posts are added on a regular and frequent basis.

2. 3 Wishlist Member dedicated plugins that help increase interaction between members and will also help you maintain an active forum.

1. Make sure you have forum moderators

The moderators are usually members who participate in the forum on a regular basis, comment on threads, help other members and basically help keep it active and professional so members would want to come back and post their questions to the forum.

One of the best ways is to turn several members into moderators by offering them the “job” in exchange for their monthly subscription to the membership site (or part of it).

2. Add new threads to the forum before your launch it using fake users

Prepare several threads and add them to the forum as they are added by different users. This is kind of a “dirty” trick but it works great and it will make your forum look very much alive right from the start.

Nobody likes to see an inactive forum with zero threads, and it will make it harder to attract members to participate, that is why preparing some threads (and even answers) in advance will make others want to join the conversation as well.

3.  Use the gamification system as a incentive

You can use Wishlist Points for gamification purposes. Wishlist Points allows members to earn points based on various actions throughout the site. These points can be redeemed for access to protected content and to gain access to additional membership levels according to your decision.

4. Encourage members to come back to the forum using Wishlist Tags plugin

With Wishlist Tags your members can tag each other in comments or forum discussions. The person is then notified and invited to join the discussion which has proven to immediately increase interaction within any membership site.

5. Give members incentives for participating in forum discussions

Give your members intensives for participating in the forum, for example: special discount codes (using Wishlist Coupons) that are listed only inside the threads, valuable tips and helpful information

You may also find this tip useful: 

Which Forums Integrate with Wishlist Member?

Access the Complete Wishlist Member Tips Series

Check out our other tips to help you manage your membership site better and increase your conversions faster!

Here are some of our latest tips:

• Tip #32: Top 10 Powerful Wishlist Member Dedicated Plugins to Empower Your Membership Site
• Tip #33: Preventing from New Members Access to Old Content – Pros & Cons
• Tip #34: 7 Powerful Tactics to Creating Urgency & Get a Lot More Registrations to Your Wishlist Membership Site
• Tip #35: 10 Powerful Tactics that will Increase Your Emails Open and Response Rates
• Tip #36: Should You Build Your Membership Site on a Separate Domain on Not?

Access the complete Wishlist Member tips series in this link

You May Find These Posts Interesting:

Tip #32: Top 10 Powerful Wishlist Member Dedicated Plugins to Empower Your Membership Site

Tip #28: 5 Powerful Tactics to Increase the Registration Rates to Your Membership Site

Tip #18: Which Forums Integrate with Wishlist Member?

Tip #33: Preventing from New Members Access to Old Content – Pros & Cons

Tip #34: 7 Powerful Tactics to Creating Urgency & Get a Lot More Registrations to Your Wishlist Membership Site

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