4 things to keep in mind while thinking of attaching a forum to your blog

I love forums. I love to par­tic­i­pate in them, and even more: I like to start them. If it weren’t for forums, I prob­a­bly wouldn’t have ever got­ten into web devel­op­ment, let alone blog­ging. I have ran forums in the past, and I take part in a few just about every time I go online.

The only thing with forums is that they are so hard to get an active com­mu­nity going with it. A lot of blog­gers will have a forum as an addi­tion to their blog in hopes that it will cre­ate a bet­ter com­mu­nity, or just have a forum to make them look bet­ter. While a forum can maybe add a cou­ple extra points to your pro­fes­sion­al­ism, they are also things that should be well thought out, and released on time.

Too many blog­gers who have forums have a dead forum. Just because your blog gets a 10 or more com­ments a post doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean that you will get all of those com­men­ta­tors go to your forum. I have some tips for blog­gers inter­ested in cre­at­ing a forum for their blog, because it just doesn’t help you much man­ag­ing a forum on top of a newly begun blog.

1. Under­stand that to build your forum, you need a steady going blog

Your blog needs some traf­fic; an active user base. That’s very impor­tant too, because what’s the pur­pose of hav­ing a dead blog and a dead forums? Forums are by far one of the hard­est things to pop­u­late online, and if you’re still at the early stages of your blog then what hope do you have for your forum? Don’t try to do both at once, take it slow and easy. Just remem­ber, as I had said above: 10 com­ments a post is fan­tas­tic, but how many of them do you hon­estly think will join your forum?

2. Think of a future forum as a lifeline

A forum attached to your blog can actu­ally be very use­ful if you really think about it. The forum would serve as a sec­ondary method of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with your read­ers, and that’s an impor­tant thing to have between you and your read­ers. What can your read­ers do for you though?

Well, con­tent of course!

Yes, a forum is full of user sub­mit­ted con­tent. While you’re away, or sleep­ing, your forum mem­bers will be writ­ing posts on your forum. They could be ask­ing you ques­tions, or even writ­ing arti­cles them­selves. While this is pretty unlikely for a start­ing forum, it is still all some­thing that can hap­pen. Even if they’re not writ­ing things per­tain­ing to your niche, they are still doing a very impor­tant thing:

Cre­at­ing a bet­ter community

Blogs have a great sys­tem for the way peo­ple to talk to each other, but if you were to com­pare user inter­ac­tion on a blog against a forum, you would find that a forum beats the liv­ing day­lights out of blogs. Com­ment­ing is the main way users get across to each other on a blog, and com­ment­ing is really just lim­ited to what cat­e­gory your file your post in. Then there is a forum that has really no lim­i­ta­tions and can have any topic in it you want in it. You can get a lit­tle more for­mal with each other by cre­at­ing pro­files, and get­ting to know each other bet­ter than you ever would through a blogs com­ment­ing system.

So, besides users hav­ing a bet­ter time on your site, how does cre­at­ing a hap­pier envi­ron­ment for your read­ers help you as a blog­ger? The answer is pretty sim­ple: with a great com­mu­nity comes great trust. Like I said, con­nect­ing with your read­ers is so vital for you as a blogger.

3. Keep­ing the two sep­a­rate: Ask your­self these 5 questions

As hec­tic as things can get on the Inter­net, doing what’s best for each com­mu­nity can be a tough choice to make. Just know one thing: your forum and your blog are two totally dif­fer­ent things, and while one thing can be bet­ter for one of them, it may not be so good for the other. I will not answer these ques­tions, but you are free to answer them and post them in the com­ments. I will def­i­nitely reflect on your answers in the comments.

1. How can you evenly con­tribute to your blog and forum? The obvi­ous answer is to post on your forum a few times a day, and maybe your blog once a day. But believe me on this one: It is MUCH eas­ier said than done. Sure, maybe 10 forum top­ics and one blog post a day seems like a doable thing at first, but over­time you may just start with 8 forum top­ics and 1 blog post a day. Once you start that, you’re bound to keep slip­ping in the numbers.
2. What will you need to do mar­ket­ing wise? Mar­ket­ing a forum and a blog can require two dif­fer­ent mar­ket­ing schemes as they are dif­fer­ent sites. But you will find that they are not too dif­fer­ent, and you can in fact pro­mote your forum through blog com­ment­ing, or your blog through forum posting.
3. How can you man­age two dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties? A blog and a forum are two dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties. They need to be man­aged dif­fer­ently than each other, and one can prove to be tougher than the other. Just be able to have the patience and tol­er­ance to run them both (yes, tol­er­ance for the moments where you want to rip out your hair).
4. How will you con­vert blog com­men­ta­tors to forum posters, and vice-versa? It may seem sense to you that if some­one com­ments on your blog, they will most likely want to join your forum. I think it is more likely for a forum poster to com­ment a lit­tle on your blog, but not as com­mon for a blog com­men­ta­tor to join your forum. It would pretty nice to have every­one take part in both, but sadly it is a dif­fi­cult thing to do.
5. Can you find inspi­ra­tion from each com­mu­ni­ties? Do you think that hav­ing a forum will help you come up with bet­ter blog posts? Do you think writ­ing on your blog will help you and your read­ers post bet­ter on the forum? It’s def­i­nitely pos­si­ble, and like I said above: A forum can be your lifeline.

I would love to hear your answers to those ques­tions. Feel free to write them in the com­ments and I will do a reflec­tion of your answers.

4. The life span of your forum

Do you think your forum will be there for a while? Or are you just mak­ing a forum as a “test ‘n see” kind of thing? Like most web pio­neers, you see this new ven­ture as the one that make your name huge on the web. You have so much con­fi­dence that your forum will be around for­ever, you are just too excited to see the real­ity of it all.

Your forum will prob­a­bly last as long as your blog, and it maybe it won’t. It’s kind of unpre­dictable with things like them. But if you can get at least 3 or 4 peo­ple com­ing back to your forum, then you should see that adding a forum to your blog was not a bad idea.

Some­thing to think about

If you fol­low big blog­gers like John Chow, or ProBlog­ger you will notice that they don’t have a forum. They’re two very influ­en­tial blog­gers with thou­sands of sub­scribers. With a com­mu­nity like theirs, why do you think they don’t have a forum? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one.

My opin­ion is that they don’t need one. They are doing things very well already, and adding a forum to such a large com­mu­nity of read­ers would just add to the already large work load. But that’s just me, what do you think?

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