How to take on Goliath and win?

[cgchris99]

My forum started almost a year ago. The membership is building and so are the posts. I have nearly 1000 members now. However, I have competition in my niche. I feel like David taking on Goliath. They have over 20000 members.

Any thoughts or tips on how to beat them? When I thought of starting my forum, I offered to purchase their site but they didn't even want to talk about it. So I have made it my goal to produce a better site and hopefully beat them if I can.

Any tips on how to draw in more members? I have really been working on my site and SEO for the forum. I even keep my software current and I am implementing some modifications/add-ons to make the site better.

Any other thoughts, tips, or ideas

Thanks

[rogerd]

This won't be a rapid transition, but it IS possible to supplant a bigger forum over time. I'd focus on a couple of key areas:

Features - try to identify some community features that are desirable to your target market that the other guys don't have. Expanded profiles? Personal blogs? Live chat?

Simplicity - if the other guys are loaded down with too many features that make their pages heavy and cluttered, consider a streamlined approach that puts the content up front. This site is a good example of that approach.

Performance - whether you go for more features or fewer, make sure your pages load very quickly. Visitors to your forum will notice either consciously or subconsciously, and will appreciate it.

Atmosphere - the most important thing you can do is make new arrivals feel welcomed. At the last community building session at Pubcon [pubcon.com], Ted Ulle gave a great presentation on "Building a Community One Member at at Time", and that's really how it's done. If you have to edit a new member, do you communicate in a friendly and helpful tone? If someone reads through your threads, will they find your members flaming each other? If someone new asks a question that has been answered before, will he get a helpful reply or posts that say, "Use the search button, moron!"? In terms of retaining members and gaining ground against competing forums, a friendly and welcoming atmosphere is probably THE most important thing.

Good luck!

[numbchuckskills]

im in the same situation with one of my sites..highly competitive industry with a ton of forums and started this one january of last year. The largest site has 14,000 members right now and at this time last year i had the 10 fake ones i created to get the discussions going!
Well as of today im creeping up on 10,000 members and had 1000 sign ups just in december.

Rogers advice is really perfect, I make sure that no "im new here post" goes unresponded to and really try to build a solid community through spam deletion and welcoming members.

Keep it up and one day they'll wish they had sold to you when it was still worth something :)

[cgchris99]

How in the world did you get 10000 members in a year. That's awesome. I would love to get half that.

[numbchuckskills]

advertising via overture/adwords, and a lot of good posts from the community.
Averaging about 40 new members a day now who all find the site through a forum page.
Forums really do a tremendous job of building a website for you. I have around 150,000 pages in google compared with around 1000 when i started..the more chatter that goes on the better you'll do!

[trillianjedi]

I have nearly 1000 members now.

First off - well done! Don't knock what you've managed to achieve so far. You're on the right track.

Rogers advice is spot-on. Also, appoint mods early (pick the best posters) and get them involved. Make it their forum.

Have a clear TOS and keep it a spam-free zone.

Atmosphere - the most important thing you can do is make new arrivals feel welcomed.

Amen. If you place anything less than the utmost importance to that statement then you are doomed to failure. Remember that it's not just for the benefit of the new arrivals - new readers stumbling on your forum will note the way that they will be treated if they decide to post.

It's that one single element that distinguishes a lurkers forum from a posters forum, and you want the latter.

TJ

[cgchris99]

numbchuckskills,

Can you pm me some details on your adwords ideas?
We are similar but non-competitive niche markets. I would love to talk to you more about this if your willing.

[cgchris99]

Any thoughts on how to word and Adwords ad for my forum?

Something like.

Join our xyz forum, expert advice and discussions on xyz!

[Heartlander]

I recently caught lightning in a bottle and did something remarkable that brought a great deal of traffic over a couple of week's time (No- NOT spam).
Being a forum with many different categories in our niche, but not overwhelming- and nicely laid out- I figured the newcomers would stick around.
I was wrong.
Just when you think you have it all figured out, you step back and take another look and start asking yourself what you are doing wrong, or NOT doing right.
A constant battle to keep your regulars, while recruiting new ones.

Has anyone else noticed that you can have a great deal of regulars, yet none of them really bring any friends over to the forum? At least not as a rule.
That's because its a sickness, spending so much time on a website shooting the breeze, and if it wasn't, those people would be out enjoying the weather or spending time with their families or those friends they aren't recruiting.
I should know- I'm afflicted with the illness.....

[tresmom5]

Advertising, SEO, and lots and lots of quality content. We get the bulk of our members from content within our site and then they go to our forums and see they are active. I think the goal in the beginning is to not lose any new members. When you get one, make sure they feel welcome and try not to lose them. Make lots of content available on your site that compliments your forums and you can get people there. Welcome them and you can keep them there.

[cgchris99]

Just to keep everyone informed. I have been implementing ideas posted in this thread and trying some of my own ideas. It's working.

I have been averaging about 60 new members each months and it's been gradually climbing in numbers. Well so far for January we have 127 new members and it's only the 18th of January.

Now if I can just sustain the growth.