General Managing a General Community

[Shawn Gossman]

For those of you who manage or have managed a general forum, how do you stay focused on keeping it active and engaged?

I just started my own off topic forum this year. It's been growing fairly well, and we have daily discussions, but sometimes, I lack the motivation to keep each section active with content simply because some of the sections aren't in my passion circle.

General and off topic forums are often broad and nicheless in ways.

I'd love to hear from those of you who do off topic forums

 

[Bryn]

I used to run a general community forum and even had two before it (where one I had for over four years and my most successful), but now I hate the idea... as I'd rather run a forum that's more niche-oriented.

 

[Arantor]

I find it hard to imagine general forums flourishing in the current day because I'd long since assumed social media would have eaten them unless already established and thus operating under a certain level of cult of membership.

That said I could imagine a space for a quieter general forum in the modern age where the slower pace is a welcome feature rather than being assaulted by the firehoses of social media 'content'. But I think those would be rare and need to come with a group of like-minded souls from the off.

 

[Cedric]

I do think that people on forums are looking less to general/entertainment kind of forums and more to their interested niche communities. This is because people have less time to just browse around and want to focus where their knowledge and interest lies. But I don't want to discourage anyone though, just because I think this, doesn't make it automatically true.

 

[Ravenfreak]

It is hard to keep activity on a general discussion forum, I've been doing post exchanges to help keep activity up. I've added a blog section for members to post whatever they feel like, though it's just a sub forum and not an actual blog system.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

In my experience of running Off Topic Forum thus far, I do agree that running niche forums are better and more fun!

However, I have been enjoying OTF. I usually have about a dozen posts a day on there from different members. It's nice to talk about everything, but not always as easy to post new topics about everything.

Like you said @Arantor, I do kind of welcome the quieter pace and mood versus social media. I have a FB group with 46,000+ members. It's very noisy and while it's a great group, it's easy to get lost and forget some good discussions because so much is happening.

 

[CTS]

Imho, politics ruined general topic forums for me.

Edit to add: i had this contemplation when I was starting my forum. And i just didn't want the conflict that seem to ensue. Kinda tired of it all in forums.

 

[Cpvr]

Managing a general chat forum isn’t easy, as it’s much more competitive than other niches. However, it’s still possible to find some level of success with one.


I think it’s a good idea to focus on the main sections that you feel you can populate with content the best. It’s okay if some sections don’t receive a lot of activity initially, but I’d recommend posting a topic or two in those areas once or twice a week.



Generally, these areas will start to pick up as well.



General forums tend to thrive on uniqueness and the quality of conversations they offer. It has been proven that these forums can gain momentum quickly, especially those big ‘off-topic’ forums with millions of posts(offtopic.com), and @Nebulous’s general chat forum which boasts over 600k posts.