The Care and Feeding of your readers' forum

[C James]

Etienne started a discussion in his forum about how to get his forum up and running, and then how to grow and maintain it, and how to utilize it to best advantage to promote his work.

 

Some great suggestions were posted there, and I thought it would be appropriate to continue the discussion here.

 

To begin with, all Hosted Authors (including Shared Hosted) should include on their GA hosted website links to the main GA site, as well as to their individual readers' forums here.

 

If you post your stories at the Nifty archive (which is highly recommended -- see the pinned topic Getting Your Stories Noticed! Tips and Discussion for New Authors here at the Writers' Forum ), you should make sure to include a link to your GA website and a link to your GA readers' forum in the story at Nifty.

 

Anybody else with ideas and suggestions, please chime in .

Here were some of the ideas people posted in Etienne's thread:

 

 

Talk

 

Ask some questions, ask for reviews, comments, or anything they'd like to say.

 

Whenever you release a new chapter, start a thread on it in here.

 

You can have "Hypothetical Situation" threads. "What do you would happen if so-and-so did this or got together with so-and-so."

 

Spice it up and have some fun

 

 

You might also post something in the writer's forum asking for suggestions.

 

Another idea ... if you have readers who contact you by email abot your story, especially "regulars", ask them to come here and participate.

 

 

One of the things I noticed about your page is that there's no link to your forum...I dont mean the GA forum, I mean your forum. I mean, most of the other authors have banners like the one on Doms site. That kinda lets people know that they can go to a forum and talk about your story that you're writing and that they're reading.

 

 

Just ask someone to add the banner to your page or if you can do it yourself, you should. Also try adding a link to your forum into your sigi

 

 

Just a few thoughts from this forum addict:

 

The link to the forum at the end of each chapter should IMHO help.

What might be helpful is an easy-to-see format, such as a new thread for each new chapter.

 

I've only just started reading "appearances", but once I'm caught up I'll be happy to do my best to

try and develop some conversations about the story and keep them going. Once you get a few dedicated forum members, things pick up in a hurry.

 

 

Also, I noticed you've started to post at Nifty (up to chapter 2 at this point.) You've got a link to your GA story page there -- you could also say something like "after you read the chapter, please come and chat about it at my readers' forum" and give the link, to your specific forum here.

Kitty

 

 

Since your forum is relatively new, I think you just have to be patient. Once your fans gain comfort in discussing your story(ies) with their fellow fans as well as with you the author, traffic will build.

 

Good Luck

Vic

[LittleBuddhaTW]

I don't really know what else I can add to the excellent suggestions that have been given already.

 

Ask questions, encourage debate and analysis, maybe start a poll or two. In the beginning, I think the moderator needs to play a more active role to get things started ... and it's also crucial to let your readers know that you have a discussion forum. Once it gets underway, though, the forums tend to take on a life of their own. When things get slow, though, you can jump back in with more questions, prodding your readers to give their input.

 

Personally, I've been amazed at how quickly my forum has taken off, and that has a lot to do with several posters who tend to make a lot of interesting comments and stir up some good discussions. Kitty has also been a big help in encouraging discussion and debate on my forum.

 

My best advice, though, is not to take a passive role in the forum. Although that has worked fine for Dom in his forums, most of us "mere mortals" need to be a little more active in the day-to-day discussion to keep things going and maintain interest.

[DomLuka]

My best advice, though, is not to take a passive role in the forum. Although that has worked fine for Dom in his forums, most of us "mere mortals" need to be a little more active in the day-to-day discussion to keep things going and maintain interest.

 

I don't think I have a choice in my forum!

 

Actually, I was talking to another author about this recently. We determined that if you can

[dkstories]

If you want an example of what happens when Dom posts in his forums...imagine armageddon.

 

God knows I stress out regularly about my forum slowing down. I seem to pop in there with what I think are funny comments at times to help get things moving a bit, or to just piss someone off that's pissed me off. Either way, we should be careful to neither over do it or to let things wither on the vine.

 

Another suggestion...there's several people who are positively rabid posters...pm them and have them help you get the conversation started...

[C James]

God knows I stress out regularly about my forum slowing down. I seem to pop in there with what I think are funny comments at times to help get things moving a bit, or to just piss someone off that's pissed me off. Either way, we should be careful to neither over do it or to let things wither on the vine.

 

Another suggestion...there's several people who are positively rabid posters...pm them and have them help you get the conversation started...

 

I have no idea what a positively rabid poster would look like but definitely, high-posting people can be useful in a forum.

 

Author involvement is the single biggest factor in keeping a forum moving. Certainly there are some who don't need to do this, but if forum activity slows down, nothing helps as much as Author involvement.

 

There are other methods that help a great deal, such as enlisting frequent posters to help keep the conversations on topic (if that's what the Author prefers). This is easy for a poster to do; they just reply to the last off-topic post and have the latter part of their post address the actual topic, preferably in a way that will spur conversation. Many posters would enjoy doing this as a way to help, as a way of saying "thank you" to the Authors who give us all these wonderful stories.

 

There is also something brand new that I can suggest: GA now has a Writer Support Team, and one of its functions is helping with things like this. The Writer Support Team even has an Author Forum development section (which I lead). So, for any Author having problems of any kind with their forums, please PM me (or any WST member), and you will get help.

CJ

[DomLuka]

I have to agree with Dan. There is such a thing as too much, even if too much is one post. I think a lot of readers like to think of the forums as their place to discuss stories, where they can say anything they want, positive or negative, and I don

[Graeme]

Am I going to get in trouble for disagreeing with Dom?

 

A lot depends on the type of forum and posters. What Dom has said may be relevant for his forums, but for others the readers may (and probably do) enjoy the interaction with the author as they learn more about what has been written and what's going on around it.

 

I'd say the larger the fan base, the less involvement the author needs to have as it becomes more a discussion between fans. With a smaller number of active fans, it becomes more a discussion between them and the author -- with the silent majority reading over their shoulders, so to speak.

 

Just my opinon....

[Jack Scribe]

...the readers may (and probably do) enjoy the interaction with the author as they learn more about what has been written and what's going on around it.

 

I'd say the larger the fan base, the less involvement the author needs to have as it becomes more a discussion between fans. With a smaller number of active fans, it becomes more a discussion between them and the author -- with the silent majority reading over their shoulders, so to speak.

 

Just my opinon....

 

A valuable opinion. I've chosen to answer forum postings because I (1) enjoy it, and (2) my traffic is fairly light; I don't have the 'problem' of having too many participants. It is interesting to see the large counts of the 'silent majority' or the lurkers on the forum. Hopefully, theyll join in at some point.

 

Jack

[DomLuka]

So what you

[Kitt]

I tripped on this forum this morning and thought it should be brought back into the light, at least for a few days. A while back there was a discussion going on exactly this topic, and I thought all the "new" authors who were having it might benifit from seeing what people like Dom Luca had to say on the subject.

 

 

I think the most helpful thing I read here was the posting of a link to the discussion forum at the bottom of EVERY chapter. Often if I am reading on my tablet it is cumbersome to leave reviews, and bopping around to get to a forum is left till I can get to my laptop. Unfortunately by then I sometimes forget what it is I wanted to say!

[Timothy M.]

thanks for pulling this old tread up, Kitt. It certainly is interesting to see how opinions differed 'in the old days'. I have to say Graeme's post made most sense to me. There's a huge difference between forums of authors with a large fan base where the story sub-forums can run with only the occasional input from the author and the majority of the forums which require steady interaction to keep active.

 

And the funniest part is dkstories' comment about what happened when Dom Luka posted in his forum. Can you imagine what would happen today ?

 

now all I need is a tread or some posts saying how having a forum is overrated and you can live happily as an author on GA without one

Edited June 17, 2014 by Timothy M.