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Growth Should you continue to add content or step back at one point?

For discussions related to expanding the member base.

Cedric

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As a community leader, one of the biggest questions you’ll face is whether you should always be adding new content to your forum or if there comes a time when you should step back and let members drive the discussions.

Some forums thrive because their owners stay actively involved - starting discussions, responding to members, and keeping the community engaged. Others seem to fade away when the owner stops posting, leaving members without much direction. Sometimes, you see forums thrive even when the owner is not involved.

So, what do you think? Should forum owners continue adding new content daily, even when their forum has grown? Or is there a point where the community should take the lead?
 
As a community leader, one of the biggest questions you’ll face is whether you should always be adding new content to your forum or if there comes a time when you should step back and let members drive the discussions.

Some forums thrive because their owners stay actively involved - starting discussions, responding to members, and keeping the community engaged. Others seem to fade away when the owner stops posting, leaving members without much direction. Sometimes, you see forums thrive even when the owner is not involved.

So, what do you think? Should forum owners continue adding new content daily, even when their forum has grown? Or is there a point where the community should take the lead?
I think a base level of participation is always warranted. There should hopefully come a time where membership moves the conversation forward. However, management/owners should always be available and have some level of community involvement. Even if this is logging in and posting occasionally, this shows that the owner is invested in the services. Over time, depending on size, this structure can move to less frequent postings but the shift should occur to where a strong leadership team or staff team continue the engagement with the owner providing more presence to the staff team.
 
I always add content to my forum EVERYDAY. If new discussions I start aren't getting replies, I stop creating threads until we get some responses, and I try to reply to more posts.
 
Although I want to and enjoy adding content, sometimes I have to break away just to keep myself fresh. And sometimes life gets in my way.
 
As forum owners, we take on multiple roles, especially when it comes to content creation.

While we often create guides, start discussions, and engage with members, quality content tends to have more impact than sheer quantity. If we’ve built a strong foundation with valuable guides and discussions, we can afford to step back at times without constantly pushing new content.

That said, forums thrive on ongoing engagement. The key isn’t just starting new discussions, it’s also keeping existing threads active. Asking thoughtful questions and encouraging deeper conversations within ongoing discussions can help sustain engagement without the need for a continuous influx of new threads.

A community that thrives isn’t necessarily one with the most topics, but rather one where discussions are meaningful and ongoing.

Instead of focusing solely on adding new content, we should also make sure that existing conversations remain active and engaging.
 
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I think it's important for admins to always continue to actively participate in discussions, but naturally, over time and as a forum continues to grow, their participation will reduce slightly to account for other time they're having to invest in maintaining and running the community.

I'd always say that an admin should be aiming to at the very least reply to all/most posts in any suggestion/feedback/announcement sections, and should be aiming to make at least a few replies to regular threads on their forums each week. The more engagement, usually, the better - but at the same time, it's rarely positive to have the feel that the "most active/contributing" member on a community is the admin/staff members. Absolutely - admins and staff should really aim to be the most active and contributing members - but ideally, they shouldn't be seen to be so. Makes sense in my head anyhow. :LOL:
 
I think admins should continue to add to the discussions on their forums, but sometimes life does get in the way and you do need to step back. Also when you feel burnout coming it's probably best to step back for only a day or two.
 
I think adding continuous content is probably the best option to keep new and exciting discussions flowing within your community, unless your forum has gotten big enough like IGN or ResetEra levels of big. Just my two cents.

I'm guilty of not posting on my forum as much but i've been dealing with some health issues as of late and i'm hoping to rectify that issue this year in 2025. :)
 

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