Discussion Forums could be really successful, lots of people posting means lots of different topics, which translates into lots of different keywords that can be found on Google. For this reason, they’re good to have even for sites where the main focus isn’t a discussion forum, lots of interesting content generated that people
can find on search, which leads them to your site for whichever other purpose it may be designed. You can see examples on the web where sites run strictly a discussion forum as a resource for people to talk about, for example, about Corvettes, and where for example companies have discussion forums to take the load off a bit on their customer support team, or for product reviews.
But let’s stick to strictly discussion forums for now. What does it take to work? In my eyes, it’s activity. I’ve searched tons of times on Google for something specific, which led me to a discussion forum because there was a specific topic/post related to what I was looking for, but when I got there I realized it was just someone posting a similar question that I had. No reply, maybe a couple threads in a couple other topics, and the most recent post was from March 6th, 2006! Who wouldn’t leave a forum like that right away?
So to me it seems like a catch 22. For a forum to be successful, it needs activity, but to see activity it helps a lot to already be popular. It’s definitely possible though if there is an interesting topic or idea and people, perhaps starting with friends, start getting into it. On a practical note, consider that anyone rarely posts on a
forum to not get an answer, even if the forum is popular, someone who doesn’t get an answer doesn’t feel like coming back, so forum admins can answer those threads with 0 posts to help. Good luck posting!
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