Create a Rough Idea of What You Want This Event to Be

You want to be able to start somewhere before speaking to your staff members on your forum. The first thing you should do is jot down a few key things about the event and anything that you think would be important to discuss when speaking with your staff. Make sure you have a rough idea of the amount of work that will be needed from the staff members and what you plan to put on the table.

Announce It to Your Staff

Once you have a rough idea of what you want this event to be, it is time to announce your plans to the staff. You could post this announcement in the staff room, or by any other means of staff communication. This can be a simple “get ready” announcement, with some of the details you drew up. Make sure they have a decent idea of what you are planning, you don’t need to go into detail at this point, that will come later on, but make sure that you give enough information so that there isn’t much confusion about what exactly is going to happen.

Plan a Staff Meeting

After the staff know what you are planning, it is time to have a meeting with them to start working on the details. Planning the staff meeting could be done in the announcement if you want. Make sure that the most amount of staff members can be online at once during this meeting, because the more people, the better. This meeting is where you give your detailed notes to your staff, and allow the event to become something better. Allow you and your staff to brainstorm possibilities for the event. How could you make it better? Is this necessary for the event? Will adding this thing be good or bad? Those are the types of things you should be talking about in your meeting. You want your staff to grow together during this process and you want the best possible event plans to come through. That is what you are planning, so make sure you are prepared. Do not go into the meeting empty-handed with no clue of where to start the conversation.

I would suggest having this conversation over some sort of chat system, because it is extremely easy to archive that conversation. It is also the quickest and most efficient way to have a conversation like this.

The Staff Meeting

Note: remember the techniques to use to help motivate your staff, don’t just start talking about the work first.

Once you have your meeting, make sure you have Microsoft Word, Notepad, or something similar to those programs opened. You want to make sure you keep track of important elements talked about in your meeting. I always kept Notepad opened when I talked to someone about project plans and it helped me a lot for the future. Jot down anything and everything that will need to be remembered.

You want to make sure to leave room for brainstorming between everyone. I’m sure that once you give your event plan details, there will be some great ideas and discussions that will arise. You need to be the leader of the discussion at all times. Make sure the things discussed are relevant and beneficial to the overall plans.

Once the meeting is over, save your file and post it on the forums for quick and easy access.

Setting Up Event Planning Forums

Now that you and your staff have a good idea of how you are planning this event, it is time to set up specific event planning forums. I’ve had up to 23 planning forums, but I doubt you will need as many. You will need an “Event Plans” forum where all the general information will be held. This is where you will keep most of the plans so that it is easily accessible by all of the staff members at any time.

I suggest you set up the following topics in the “Event Plans” forum:

• Deadlines – this is where all your important deadlines will be posted. You will probably need to be consistently updating this topic and you will need to remind your staff to keep looking at it.
• Specific Jobs – If a group of individual has a specific task that they need to fulfill for this event, then have a topic for each group/individual. This is the easiest and most efficient way to do this. That person or group will just need to keep checking that topic and it will be easy to relay information between you and the staff team. You can also keep deadlines there if needed.
• Uploads – most events need some sort of uploads, for things such as banners, signatures, etc. so the best way to manage this is to keep one upload topic where everything can easily be managed and accessed. With this setup, you won’t need to dig through countless topics and posts to find uploads your staff had for the event. If it seems that you will need to upload a lot of things, consider a whole upload forum for better organization.
• Your Personal To-Do Forum/Topic – I found this to be extremely helpful when planning large-scale events on forums. You will most likely need a place where you can put down all the information and have it ordered as you like. I would set up my own forum for this sort of thing, where only I had access to. This allowed me to do whatever I needed to keep organized for this event. I suggest you do the same as well.

Now You Have Planned and Organized Your Event

You have all of the necessary tools and steps to accomplish your plans now. Take your time and never rush your them for the event. You want to make them as detailed as possible. Remember, you only have one chance to pulling this event off, you might as well make it great! Properly planning and organizing the event is the root of a successful one. The more time you take planning and organizing it all out, the better it will turn out to be.

How to Properly Plan & Organize Events is a post from: ForumBlogger

Link: http://www.iconfinder.com/

If you can’t think of anything to search, you can always just browse their icon sets.

The icons here are amazing guys and you should definitely check them out! I’m sure this website will help out many of you!

Icon Finder – Incredible Website for Free Icons is a post from: ForumBlogger

First, You Must Be Motivated

It’s really hard to motivate others if you are not motivated. You can’t really express your ideas in an enthusiastic way if you are not motivated about the subject at hand. So before you try to motivate others, make sure you are motivated.

Don’t Talk As Much About the Work Involved

Just as you can’t “think about the work” when motivating yourself, try to avoid talking about the work involved as much as you can when speaking with your staff team. People are typically NOT motivated about work, so talking about it won’t help you motivate them. So what do you do?

Talk About The Finished Product

If you are motivated about the finished product then you should hopefully be able to transmit that enthusiasm towards your staff members. One of the best way to transmit this sort of enthusiasm is by having chats with your staff. These chats could be individual or groups. I have found that motivating your staff through chat is much more efficient than through forum-means.

What you want to do when you speak with your staff is to get them excited about the final product. If you can get your staff to be excited about it when it is completed, then motivating them will be easy. The final product is what people want. If there was any way to avoid all of the work in between to get to the end, then you wouldn’t need to motivate your staff at all. But you can’t just start talking about the work involved until they are motivated, otherwise it will be a complete failure.

How to Talk About Work

Once your staff members are excited about the final product, they are motivated. Now you are able to talk about some of the work involved. The main thing you should be weary of is making the whole thing feel overwhelming. If your staff members feel like they are overwhelmed, there is probably not enough motivation in the world to get them to work. Once you have given them the idea of the final product, tell them the first step, and only the first step. You can easily get too ahead of yourself, and cause them to lose their motivation to work.

What Ways Do YOU Motivate Your Staff Members?

This is my most effective way to motivate people I work with, what about you? Are there any tricks you have used that have proven helpful on your own forum? Share them!

How to Motivate Your Staff Members is a post from: ForumBlogger

Questions to Answer in the Comments:

1) What do you classify PM advertising as?

2) What do you personally do in circumstances where PM advertisement has occurred on your forum?

3) Have you ever advertised your forum or website through private messages? How?

Feel free to leave your response.

What Do You Think About PM Advertising? is a post from: ForumBlogger

Don’t Think About The Work. Think About The Final Product.

We will always try to avoid things that seem to be displeasing. If “working” seems displeasing, then our minds will make us not want to do it. It is as simple as that. So how would you trick your mind into liking work if it already seems displeasing?

Don’t envision the work needed to complete the project, just imagine the final product. Imagine when it is completely finished, and imagine how great it will be. Imagine the floods of members and posts that will be rushing in after you complete your project. Now isn’t that an awesome idea?

The Best Way to Motivate Yourself to Work is by NOT Thinking About the Work

It won’t help you whatsoever to keep thinking about the daunting amount of work that is needed before your project is even complete. It won’t speed things up if you convince yourself that there is still a lot of work ahead.

So think about what you want it to be. Think about how great it will turn out to be, and forget about all the work in between, that is nothing.

That is how I manage to motivate myself. I don’t think about the work needed to reach the final product, I just envision the final product already completed. That motivates me. That drives me. If you want that final product badly enough, you will find the motivation needed to work on it.

Final Note:

I hope you find this technique helpful in your pursuit to motivate yourself to work, which I realize is EXTREMELY hard to do at times. I face it all the time, and everyone else does to, but what separates a great administrator from a poor one is the ability to conquer this barrier. You just have to find tricks like these that can help you overcome these obstacles so that you can have your forum be the success it deserves to be.

*Image courtesy of ralphbijker

How to Motivate Yourself is a post from: ForumBlogger

A Risky But Proven Method

I have to tell you right now, I have never done anything like this, but I have seen others do it with amazing results. Results that beat almost every revamp of a forum I’ve seen because of how it is implemented.

What these administrators did was not necessarily on purpose, but the end result was similarly the same: an extremely active forum with a revitalized “new forum energy” that exceeded a “traditional” revamp.

So what did they do? Well, they closed down their forum and opened it weeks later with huge updates and a lot of hype.

How Is This Different From a Revamp and How Is It Better?

Good question. After analyzing why others had such great success with this method, I started to realize a few things:

This is better because it creates more hype than a normal revamp

A normal revamp traditionally consists of an administrator that probably closes down a forum for a few hours to a day and applies a multitude of modifications to their existing forum. This can create hype, but it’s not as much as weeks of it. When you close down your forum and you don’t mention about opening again, you can expect that many of the members will receive a re-opening very well. This is why I mentioned that most of the administrators that did this, did not necessarily do it on purpose. They probably had no intentions of opening the forum again, but when they did, the results were quite phenomenal.

It allows you to take a break and re-think your forum

Taking a break from your forum is very healthy and recommended. Taking a long absence like this could revitalize your motivation on that forum and allow you to work more efficiently than you ever did before. It allows you to take all the time you need to think about what worked and what did not on your forum. No need to worry about staff problems, moderation issues, member issues, etc. Its a nice break that allows you to work with your forum at your own pace.

Motivation is higher than usual

Staff seem to be more motivated to re-open a forum than to work on one that is already open. There might not be a simple answer to why that happens, but it does happen. When your staff are motivated and you are motivated, then you can expect great things.

So How Would You Plan Something Like This?

First of all, planning something like this can be difficult, because you can’t make any sort of suggestion that you are planning on re-opening any time soon. You also need to literally take a break from your forum and allow others to do the same. I would probably suggest waiting at least one month before you plan on re-opening. This allows enough time for people to “miss” your forum, which is important.

First Step – Contact Potential Staff Members

After waiting a month or more, I’d suggest you look at who was the most active on your forum before closing and contact those members. You want specific individuals to know that you are planning to re-open. Contacting them directly also lets them feel special about being involved in such a project. You can imagine how happy a member will be that their favorite forum is coming back and they are helping to plan it all. You will probably find very motivated and dedicated individuals if you ask the right people.

Second Step – Organizing, Planning, and Ideas

With your new hand-picked staff members, you are ready to brainstorm ideas for this re-opening. You want to be very organized. Figure out what worked on your forum, what did not. Why? Figure out what you can do that other forums are doing well. Find the best possible environment for your community to grow in and create that with your new staff team.

Make sure to go over key issues that occurred in the first round, and how you plan on dealing with them this time around. Don’t make the same mistake twice.

Third Step – Have A New Theme and Look

This is actually very important because it is a visual representation of your “new” re-opened forum. If you open the forum the same way you closed it, you will not be greeted with as great as a reception. Please make it a rather big deal to find a good and fitting look, re-arrange your forums and categories, re-post the old rule threads, create a new logo, etc.

You want your forum to feel completely new and this should be something you really work on.

Fourth Step – Hype Your Opening

You want EVERYONE to know you are re-opening your forum. You want to set a date to open and STICK TO IT! Don’t even think about setting a date until you are 110% that you can meet that deadline. Now go out there and make sure every single person knows. Ask old members to help spread the word and have signatures telling about the opening date.

Final Words

I just want to emphasize that this is a pretty risky move. Only do something like this when you have almost no other alternative. It is risky, but with proper planning and execution you can really revitalize your forum.

You also should be aware that a certain activity level before closure is also helpful. If you closed down your forum because absolutely no one was posting, then getting people to post might be difficult at first, so this requires you to plan and execute this extra well. If you had a few golden members, then you are in good shape. Remember that you still need to make sure people are going to post on the first day and that is part of the planning.

I hope that if you are planning on doing something like this, you share your results with me. If you have any questions regarding this method, or you possibly would like to talk to me about some of your plans for doing this on your forum, you know you can always contact me.

Closing Your Forum Can Be Amazingly Helpful is a post from: ForumBlogger

A disillusioned administrator creates a forum, but the minute he realizes it requires a lot of time and work to maintain it, he is no longer motivated, which causes the forum to die a slow and painful death.

Slow and painful indeed. It’s sad to see potential forums close down due to lack of motivation on the administrator’s part. It angers me when an administrator comes to me seeking forum advice, but when he realizes that the forum requires so much attention and work, he decides to quit.

Why This Happens

I’ve been following forum development for a while and I’ve come up with an elegant answer to this seemingly complex question. Why do 99% of forums die?

It is because creating a forum is so easy that maintaining it seems so difficult. If only creating the forum was much harder than it is today, we would probably have much more success rates. Why do you think forums that are hosted on professional software tend to have more success? It is because the individual invested something in the beginning, which in this case is money. If you invested money to get that professional software, I’m sure you won’t close it down as easily as someone who starts a forum on free forum software.

Easy Come, Easy Go

I’ve seen administrators create forums in a single day, thinking that they are ready to launch it. When it doesn’t launch well, they give up and throw in the towel.

They invested nearly nothing to begin with, so why would they want to invest much later on? It’s just TOO easy to create a forum today. If I wanted to start a forum about sports I could probably set one up to launch the following day easily. Now would it be successful if I did something like that? Probably not.

If free forums required you to pay a one-time fee (which I know would completely defeat the purpose) then I will bet you anything that there will be a higher percentage of active and thriving forums than there are today.

Why? Because of that initial investment that is required. They won’t give up that easily, and only people that are somewhat prepared will even think about launching that forum.

What Do You Think?

Do you agree with my analysis? Do you think the reason forums die are because administrators are generally unaware of the huge time and work costs that are involved with running a forum? Do you think they lose motivation so easily because of this realization?

The Reason Why 99% of Forums Fail is a post from: ForumBlogger

Change your forum’s TITLE to reflect your forum’s interest and gain Google SEO:

If your forum’s TITLE is just “My Forum” then change it to “My Forum – Description of Forum.” It will easily and quickly grab the attention of your guests and you can increase your forum’s traffic by doing so.

Have a 2010 Awards Ceremony:

Starting an awards ceremony can really bring your forum’s community back together after a long holiday break. You can look back at 2010 and see who were the most active members, most active staff members, funniest posts, etc. Be creative with your awards and try to get everyone to participate. Remember that you have to really work to promote this event properly.

If Your Forum Is Struggling, Find Those Followers:

You can’t start a forum without followers. It’s really the one thing you need before launching a community, and if you are struggling to find followers, I have written an article that will get you started here.

Become More Active Than You Ever Were Before:

You should be the main source of activity on your forum. If you did not realize that, then you better make it your goal this year. Your activity as the administrator of that forum is crucial for its overall activity. When the main administrator begins to post less, you will see how the whole forum begins to post less as well. Your forum’s activity does truly depend on your own activity, so make this year your most active year yet!

Send a Bulk Email To All Your Members:

The holiday break can mean that a lot of your members were away from their hometowns. Remind them of your forum by sending out a bulk email. Make sure to tell them about any plans you have in store for 2011. New year, new possibilities!

Think About Changing Your Theme:

A new year always feels like a new experience for many. Why not change your theme to reflect the change in year at your forum? New themes can create activity on your forum. Time and time again, I have seen forums just add a new theme and some fresh activity comes from this. It won’t last, but if you take the opportunity to really use that activity, you can do some great things with it.

Think About Changing Your Layout:

Can you re-arrange your forum in any way? Look at the stats for the previous year and see which forums didn’t really get much use. Could you maybe merge that forum with another one to make it more active?

Start Hosting More Events:

Events can bring your community together. Whether you create one every week or every month, you have the opportunity to create a community-bonding experience on your forum through planned events. If you’re looking for some possible events to host on your forum there is a small, but detailed list here. I will also be posting a new Forum Game every week to look forward to!

Make Goals For Your Forum:

What do you wish to accomplish this year? Write everything down and set some sort of time-frame to accomplish these goals. Goals can help you motivate yourself and they create a better forum experience for administrators. Never give up on your goals and work diligently to accomplish them. It’s easy said, not easy done. But if you have the motivation and determination to accomplish your goals, you will be a better off than 95% of administrators.

Try Out This SEO Trick That Will Help You Rank Up On Google:

SEO is important to become a large forum that can attract visitors. Even though good SEO is often hard to accomplish on forums, that should give you even more reasons to do everything you can to make it better!

Get a Website if Possible:

As I mentioned before, SEO is not something you can easily accomplish on forums, so why not make a website? Your website could house very generic information, make you and your forum look much more professional, and give you a better chance at scoring a better rank on Google.

If You Don’t Have a Custom URL, Get One:

.COM domain names go for about $12 for a whole year. You spend more than that going to the movies once and buying a drink. You can’t pay that much for a whole freakin’ year? It’s much easier to remember than those generic “free domain names” and the default one that comes with free forums.

Advertise Everywhere:

Go out there and advertise in every single forum you possibly can. Go update those old topics you started a while ago. I keep a bookmark of all the place I advertise ForumBlogger, so when I want to update them, they are easily accessible. Update them as frequently as possible (while still following that forum’s advertising rules) and get your members involved in advertising your forum as well.

10+ Tips to Starting 2011 With a Bang is a post from: ForumBlogger

What the Game Is:

The acronym game is a great and easy game to host on your forum. The object of the game is to make the funniest sentence or phrase from the acronym letters that you provide.

How to Set It Up:

Setting this game up is extremely easy, just state the few rules I will be posting below and come up with a random order of letters. Don’t try to create an acronym for something, just put a few letters together and see what creative minds your members have. You will probably be laughing very hard with some of the posts you get in this game.

After your members have finished submitting their answers, pick the funniest one, create a new round with a new acronym, rinse, and repeat.

Just remind your members that it is supposed to be funny and not serious!

Quick Example of What It Should Be:

Acronym: H.C.T.T.E.S

My Post: Hot chimpanzees typically taste evil salami

Rules to Play Game:

• Funniest post will win (at your own choosing)
• You can only post one answer to the acronym per round
• Once a winner has been chosen, we will make a new round with a new acronym

And You’re Done

Pretty easy and fun to host. Feel free to modify any rules you would like. If you think of some way to spice this game up, let me know in the comments! If I like your idea I will add it to this post!

Acronym Game – Forum Game of the Week is a post from: ForumBlogger

Promoting the Event or Contest Is The Most Important Step

I’ve seen forum administrators that think of everything, but miss this crucial step for some reason. Giving a highly valued prize will get people that know about it interested, but if you want a successful contest or event, you will need to do much more than that. Note that I will be referring to both of these as events now, instead of repeating “event or contest” every time.

The 3 Steps to a Successful Event

1) Planning and Organizing the Event

Without properly planning and organizing the event, you will obviously not have a successful one. You need to think of rules, how you will manage the event, prizes, etc. This is a lot of work and just because it’s the first step, it does not mean that it is the least important. Take your time planning out your event and never rush it. You only have one chance to pull this event off well!

2) The Prize (aka “The Incentive”)

The prize is the incentive for participating in the event. Without a good enough prize, you won’t have as many participants as you may like. Prizes must be something that your members will value enough that they will want to participate to win it. The prize could be something as simple as a custom forum usergroup to a custom forum signature. Whatever your prize is, it has to have value for it to be a good incentive. Remember that money is not always the biggest reward.

3) Promoting The Event

Even if you have the perfect plan for your event and you’ve picked out a very valuable prize, you won’t get the amount of participants that you could have unless you promote this event properly. This process includes bulk emails, banners to the event on the top index page, constant announcements, advertising it in your signature, advertising it on other sites constantly, e-mailing your friends, etc. You need to tell as many people as possible about your event for it to be the biggest success possible.

Why Is Promoting The Event The Most Important Step?

It is the most important step because I’ve seen a lot of events that have good prizes and planning, but they are always lacking proper promotion. Because I see that events are usually lacking promotion, I dub it the most important step to a successful event or contest.

All 3 Steps Need To Be Done Well To Have a Successful Event

I am not saying that you should not care about the other 2 steps to make a successful event, but that you are most likely to forget the third. All 3 steps must be done well to have any sort of success. Do not work on a single one too much, otherwise you are more likely to ignore the importance of the rest.

The Most Important Step To A Successful Event or Contest is a post from: ForumBlogger