Viewing Thread:
"How to save the forums..."

Bandwagon Jumping!

* Create a Big Brother forum and get it high on Google.

* Create a temporary discussion forum about a popular news event in an attempt to grab the BBC HYS-style of poster.

* Do a deal with a decent search engine and put it on your lead page in an attempt to get users to make you their homepage.

* Bring back the news thing you used to do with amusing spins on various news.

* Chuck up some celebrity rubbish - that always brings in people to chat.

If you want the forums to bring people in and actually be a decent marketing addition to your site then this is the rather unfortunate turn you have to take.



However there are other good things to promote alongside this:

* Writing/poetry competitions

* Most hilarious news item of the day competition

* Best bargain of the day competiton

etc

The point is there are a 1000 ways to get in some more hits from those looking to chat about current topics and win amazon/argos vouchers but you're not attempting them and the forums are dying on their a**e.

Above all these ideas won't amount to anything without high search results and a little bit of sly marketing (email or otherwise) but using the obvious tricks (calling pictures 'Big Brother'/'other' over and over for instance) it shouldn't be a problem.

Worth a go I think.

DoomBaboon1982 wrote:
> hahahaha.
> Lady bird why can you no longer win GADs?

She lives in America, only people in Great Britain can win GADs (I think)

hahahaha.
Lady bird why can you no longer win GADs?

Colossal and giving everyone cancer. :D

Why, thank you. :)

And you're just like the sun in our Freeola sky :)

Notorious Biggles wrote:
> Back in t' day, there used to be 2000 posts a day.
>
> And you know something, whether they admitted it or not, a lot
> of people posted a lot of stuff to get noticed in time for the
> notable elections.
>
> But what's the incentive now?


Well, it seems most lurk a bit, troll a bit, and post random thoughts. Not much for quality content around here these days. Shoot, they even give GAD to plagerised posts, so what does that say about Freeola anyways..

Every now and again there is a worthy post to bother giving any attention to or commenting seriously on, but for the most part it's just bubblegum and "how's the weather?" and "what I ate today.." kinda stuff. Tony took away from me any opportunity to win GAD, so I guess it's just a matter of time until I lose complete interest in any of this.

It would be nice to have the Notable thing again, but honestly I can't think of one person that I'd vote for that sticks around long enough to note. Sure, we have the conglomerate regular posters, who as far as I see, just talk a lot but say nothing. It's nice they're trying though.. :)

Garin wrote:
> Not that I wish to doubt you're the savour or anything but how
> about a miracle to prove you are? Perhaps you could turn
> visitors into posters?

I still come and check forums too, and check posts but don't contribute that much too the conversations as have been busy but will try and contribute to it more now I am not so busy.

I still check it every day, its just a case of not enough that interests me being posted. I mean the top 3 topics are the WLT, What mood are you in and whose the oldest member. Admittedly I haven't actually looked to see what the conversation is currently on in the topics but small talk as small as that doesn't interest me. Suppose I could try and contribute but I'm more of a reader than anything.

Back in t' day, there used to be 2000 posts a day.

And you know something, whether they admitted it or not, a lot of people posted a lot of stuff to get noticed in time for the notable elections.

But what's the incentive now?

EDIT - and another thing, the loss of the old post counts will have pushed some away.