Team Building Do you actually need staff when you're starting out?

[Al]

Everyone says build a team. Get mods. Appoint admins. But when you’re starting small, is it just unnecessary bloat? A lot of early-stage forums don’t need daily moderation or policy discussions, they need posts. So does adding staff early help create momentum, or just complicate things with extra voices before there’s anything to moderate? What’s your view? Do you start solo, or build a team from day one?

I tend to fall into the camp which eschews hiring staff before needing them. After all, what's the point in having additional staff when there is nothing to moderate? Be honest, do you hire staff as a way of making up for a lack of members? "Join my team" when really what you mean is "please come and post on my forum."

 

[CTS]

I have two staff, myself and a member that pops in part time now and then as a mod. But I really don't have the traffic to be considering building a team yet.

 

[2TonWaffle]

I ask myself this quite a lot, mostly I'm the only one doing the admin'ing side of things as well as mod work. As my forum isn't near the level that I would need to start looking for staff, I continue to do everything myself.

 

[Cedric]

It’s nice to have someone on your side, so you don’t end up doing everything alone and above all, feel alone when there’s little traffic.

But most importantly, what you need is a couple of friends there ad your original audience, helping you out with posts and traffic. Not necessarily a moderator.

 

[Cpvr]

It’s nice to have someone on your side, so you don’t end up doing everything alone and above all, feel alone when there’s little traffic.

But most importantly, what you need is a couple of friends there ad your original audience, helping you out with posts and traffic. Not necessarily a moderator.

I totally agree with this.


I’d also like to add that it’s tough doing everything on your own, and reaching out to friends can really make a difference. Especially those who are willing to lend a hand, even if it’s just a few minutes a week. It’s all about building that sense of community, and having a solid team behind you is crucial. It takes more than one person to build something great, and you don’t want to risk burning out.


Even small contributions from your friends can go a long way. Teamwork really does make the dream work, and every bit adds up over time.

 

[Ravenfreak]

It depends on the niche of the forum. If you've got a promotional forum with services, you'll need more staff to take on the tasks of a package team, or any other team. If it's a general discussion forum, I personally think you should wait to hire staff. Smaller forums really just need an Admin to keep things going until they feel they need more staff IMO.

 

[L3gacy]

I was just pounding this same question. I'm 50/50 on it. I feel like “build it and they will come,” but also, having staff could help kick things off. As I sat there thinking about it, I realized that for forum owners, we need to give users something they’re not getting from other sources. And that differs from community to community. Until there's a huge movement away from places like Reddit, Facebook, X, and Discord, what's the real incentive? People are extremely lazy nowadays and come with a “what's in it for me” mentality, in my opinion. So, with that logic, for the last week I've been coding/developing a Posse Finder, since my community is based on the game Red Dead. It's unique and offers something specifically targeted to that community. So, we’ll see how it goes.

Also, I want to talk to someone about the credit system you guys have here. I have a few ideas on how this could work for my community but in a slightly different way.

 

[InMyOpinion]

It all depends on how big the forum is however for the most part I don't think you need a lot of staff when starting a forum. Yes. you want to have lots of content on your forum when you open so that new members have threads to reply to and post, but you also don't want too many staff on your forum or it may seem intimidating to new members. Plus, you want your forum to look active with USERS not just active with staff.

So ultimately you may need some staff to help you with tasks however you do not want too much staff where it looks like only staff ever posts.

 

[Wise Owl]

To be fair with you, I do not. If I just started a forum, clearly there is absolutely not much job to do and one man (me) can handle it. I do understand it gives to some people a feeling of power and they want that and it would motivate them to participate more. I am just not one of those guys who would give those privilages rigth away. When forum needs it, if it needs it, people will have it.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I try not to add a new staff member until I have around 100 posts and at least 10 members.

After that, I don't add another moderator until we (me and the other staffer) can't handle everything together.

In reality, you don't need that many staff members. I have a group of Facebook with around 50,000 members. It's extremely active. I have 5 staffers including me and my wife. We can handle it perfectly.