Selecting a Good Forum Niche

December 21, 2007 | Under Forum Developement | Leave a Comment 

Choosing the topic of your forum is an important decision. If you have your boards centered around a topic no one wants to talk about, no one will talk about it. There are two things that should be focused on when deciding if your forum niche is appropriate - if you want to talk about it and if others want to talk about it. You need both.

Choose a Discussable Topic

Your topic should be on that can be talked about. You have to be careful not to choose a topic that’s too saturated. If you choose a popular topic, it will be difficult for you to make your forum more appealing that the bigger ones. You’ll have to work much harder, in this case. “you should aim for a niche that’s specific, but not too specific. For example, poetry my be more specific than writing, and thus a good topic; however, Shakespearian poetry is probably too specific. People have to want to talk about your topic. Make sure your topic is not obscure - discussing an unpopular book or creating a forum for the Amish probably won’t generate much activity. :p

Choose a Niche you Enjoy

While still important, choosing a topic you enjoy is still something you should consider. One must enjoy the topic and be knowledgeable in it. Creating a forum, blog, or other website you know nothing about is foolish. You have to personally want to talk about it. Oftentimes, the administrator who runs the forum runs forums on topics they’re passionate about. If you don’t intend to be active in your community, choosing a topic you like isn’t all that important. However, it certainly aids in a forum’s early days and in creating a community.

Blog Posting - How Much Is Too Much?

November 30, 2007 | Under Blogging | Leave a Comment 

If you’re like most passionate bloggers, you probably post once a day, or more. You’ve probably even been told that posting at least daily will help create loyal readers. Some prominent bloggers even post three to four times a day. While this strategy does work for many larger bloggers with huge subscriber bases, it typically doesn’t work, especially for a beginning blogger. Creating a loyal reader base is how to make a blog successful. Readers who visit the site daily and comment on your blog build it, the same goes for RSS subscribers. For this reason, you want to do everything in your power to make sure your readers return; this includes not overwhelming with too many posts, which posting daily often does. If you post frequently, readers may simply get tired of reading your posts. Not only is reading time consuming, but chances are if a reader subscribes to your blog, they probably subscribed to a few other blogs as well. If these other blogs post daily, you can see how this can get quite tiring for the blog visitor. If a reader subscribes to three blogs that post twice a day, that’s six posts to read every day. Moreover, the daily RSS email reminders (if they subscribed via email) can litter their inbox and become annoying.

While this isn’t always the case, typically daily posting are of lower quality. Oftentimes these posts are either poorly constructed or republished information. Instead of focusing on how fast you post, focus on the quality of the articles. Content is king; not the amount in this case, but the quality of it. It’s better to have one high quality article than five poor quality ones. The sooner the blogging community realizes this, the better.

I suggest posting two to four times a week, instead of posting six to twelve (or more). If you could pick a consistent number, pick three posts/week. Doing this gives readers time to read your articles without feeling overwhelmed. Moreover, it lets you focus on making high quality content and gives you plenty of time to do so.

Now, there are some exceptions to this posts. For example, if you blog about something related to news, it wouldn’t make sense to only post two days after the facts. For real-life, time-essential blogs or posts posts as soon as possible.