It will only get worse and the forums will not survive in their present formSome of you has succeed, some are trying to be positive, but most of owners will just getting declines from time to time. Anyway this is reality.
Fact :
I hear that since more than 10 years and we are still alive....It will only get worse and the forums will not survive in their present form
The old forums will still be there, but it won't be the same as it used to be. The new ones will have a hard time.I hear that since more than 10 years and we are still alive....
Some of you has succeed, some are trying to be positive, but most of owners will just getting declines from time to time. Anyway this is reality.
Fact :
Not much can rectify that since most people use social media over a dedicated site on a topic.
However, I believe that in most niches, social media and forums can co-exist and complement each other. For example, my niche is freshwater planted aquariums. Most of the activity has moved to Facebook Groups over the years.
That was then (Dec 2022).The special interest forums where I have been a member for the same time period have not shown any signs of waning. They are growing. And now I have my own niche forum that is growing very nicely. In a week, my forum will be 10 months old.
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I can’t complain. We’ve been open sinds 30th September ‘22, at the end of the month marking 7 months.
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Thanks! Yeah @DohTheme made it. Definitely recommend if you consider going custom.I really like the design on your forum. Is it custom?
Also here's an update on the stats of our forum since last time:
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I once tried this approach with a well established Facebook group I have. I had opened a forum a few years after creating the group to try and eventually move off of Facebook completely, but unfortunately I only got 20 members to join out of the thousands I had in the group. I didn't want to pay for hosting anymore, so I canceled my plan and closed the forum down. I completely agree, the group administration tools aren't that great. Now I feel we have another "threat" to forums, Discord. I've seen a few communities move from forums to Discord, and I'm just not as active in these communities as I once was because I prefer forums. Certain communities thrive much better on forums, and I think many people fail to realize that. They end up jumping to what "everyone else uses" and leave forums behind.We have a Facebook group and a forum. We administer the Facebook group pretty carefully, with post approval turned on, and we favor posts by our in-house staff and content experts. We also make it a point to mention our forum and provide links to interesting threads from time to time.
Our approach might best be summarized as using the FB group as an introduction, and the forum the place for more serious, in-depth discussions and a much greater sense of community. This means, e.g., there are things we consider appropriate for the forum but not for the FB group and vice versa. We also have a FB page and an IG account - you have to find your own rhythm, I think, for how to make the best of use of all these things. There's no point in lamenting their existence so try to use them in ways that can help you and also have the forum for your more hardcore fans.
FB group administration tools are so poor. I've been interviewed by FB at length on more than one occasion - they really aren't interested.
-S-
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