Jan 12 2009
Basics on Setting up a [Blog] Forum
Blogs were created to connect the reader to the blog author, however it may not be attainable in all cases. Forums have continued to grow in popularity, although there aren’t quite as many people utilizing them as there used to be with the rise of blogs.
Adding a forum to your blog can be of a great benefit, especially if you don’t have too many daily readers. You will have (theoretically) double the ways to promote your blog/site. Plus, just because you have an additional area of your site, it doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to count the traffic against your blog - they will work together.
Some of the major blog systems, WordPress especially, allow you to add on a forum, through a plugin, integration, or other method. It is quite easy one you understand how it works and how you must employ the forums in order to make them truly work.
Here are some basics:
1. Set up the forum either as a subdomain (http://forum.example.com) or as a folder (http://example.com/forums) to make it fairly easy for readers to find the forum. Preferably, you should have each one redirect to the main version, including the plural formats of each.
2. Make sure that you create a post or have an introductory statement for the forums - people need to know that you have one, or they will discover the forums “accidentally” and they will probably leave if you don’t let them know what it offers.
3. Be sure that you open the forum with content there. It shouldn’t be empty, or else people won’t leave their input in each thread.
4. Be patient. Just because you have a forum doesn’t mean that your traffic will skyrocket and neither will people be joining up at a rapid pace. Most likely, less than 10% of your total blog subscribers/daily visitors will post anything, visit the blog, or join the forum.
5. Become involved yourself. Make sure that readers know that you are there and helping people. If your blog is for a product that you have created, this is where you should be placing help and support topics so readers know where to find support
Remember that forums aren’t for all blogs and should only be used if you absolutely need to have a separate area for posting “off topic” ideas and for readers to share thoughts with one another.
