Signs That Your Network is Dying

Forums and networks are HARD to get started. And once you get them going, it seems to be very difficult to KEEP them going.

We all like to think that when we begin an effort to get people together for conversation that there are millions of people out there who want to discuss the same things we do. But others rarely have the same agenda, even when they SAY they do.

Forums and conversational venues RARELY take off spontaneously. Getting them going takes a LOT of effort, and so does keeping them going. There are longstanding tactics that everyone uses – which sometimes are successful, but more often, just feel tired.

• Regular moderator posts.
• Encouraging members to spread the word.
• Contests.
• Controversy.
• Daily “topics”.
• Allowing ads one day a week (the result of which is, that usually, one day a week, you have lots of posts, which nobody reads, and that this is the ONLY day each week that you have posts).

We all do these things on our networks in an effort to keep it going. It may or may not help, and often it does not.

How do you know your network is dying?

• When the only posts are ones you make yourself (or your moderators make).
• When the only posts are on “ad day”.
• When people ask questions and nobody replies.
• When nobody ASKS questions anymore.
• When the majority of new signups are hit and run spammers.
• When your long time users no longer post.
• When your moderators start dropping out.
• When the only members you have that regularly do anything are the same people you associate with everywhere else online. Without new blood, networks die.

People online, as a rule, have a short attention span. While it is hard to get a venue going, it is even harder to keep it going for more than a year or two if you do manage to get it going. The initial burst of enthusiasm that people have over something new is short lived – about two months. You often find that once they lose that, there is nothing left and they wander off to see if someone else is more interesting.

Once you see those signs above, it is very difficult to bring it back from the edge of extinction. Oh, you can try, but often you are just beating a dead horse.

Nobody likes to admit that something didn’t work. But more venues fail than ever succeed, and the statistical difference between success and failure is monstrous. Perhaps one in a thousand ever even gets off the ground, and perhaps only one in a hundred of those keep going for more than a few months.

• A heavy marketing campaign can help.
• Listening to your users can help – if they talk. Often they don’t.
• Intense involvement on your part, and recruitment of other helpers can help.

But there’s no magic formula, and there is sometimes no way to rescue a venue that is in decline – the perception of decline can be almost impossible to reverse.

Often, it is simply best to go on to the next thing.