Competitions?

[Scott]

Has anyone ever tried some sort of member competition on their forum? I tried to get a Member of the Month started on one I admin, but it didn't really take very well.

I know sometimes these can turn into a popularity contest, but I'd be interested to hear details of some which worked. :)

[Aussie Bob]

WHT had the MOTM contest going for a while. I think it lasted about 6mths, and then fizzled out.

You would need a really large and active community to make something like that work, and even at that, they seem to fizzle after a while. There's only so much juice you can drain from the orange. :)

[SoftWareRevue]

Has anyone ever tried some sort of member competition on their forum? I tried to get a Member of the Month started on one I admin, but it didn't really take very well.

I know sometimes these can turn into a popularity contest, but I'd be interested to hear details of some which worked. :)I think they would always be "popularity contests."

Not that there's anything 'wrong' with that.

Often times it is the most helpful members that are the most popular. ;)

Members helping members is not just with the technical side of things. Bringing a sense of satisfaction or that spice of humor to another member is important for the morale of the community.

I think, if we did it again on WHT, we'd need to define what it is. And that would be something like, "most helpful or popular member for that month." Something along those lines.

[Tyler]

I believe I did mine about ~3 months ago. It didn't go as good as we hoped, but the last day. What we did was told everyone to post as much as they can, and we're randomly "draw" a post ID whoever, posted that post (with the ID "drawn"), won the contest. Well, we had to do it a few times to eliminate the posts like "I agree." etc, but we finally got there. Overall, I wouldn't do that same type again, wasted money and wasted time.

[writespeak]

At one forum I'm on, the owner once had a trivia contest with prizes. For a couple of weeks (I don't remember exactly how long), he'd post trivia questions at various times throughout the day and record who had the fastest time responding with the correct answer. The people with the 5 fastest times at the end were the winners.

It was fun, and it injected a different kind of energy into the forum. :)

Lois

[the_pm]

We try to do an interesting contest every once in a while on IWDN. We did a demotivational poster contest (the thread still gets dozens of views every day, and we did it almost a year ago). We've did a contest to replace our site header, and we rebuilt a lot of the imagery around it.

One neat contest we did was post your pic in your profile, confirm it in a thread, and we drew a random winner from those who posted pictures, like a raffle. The winner got a gift certificate worth double the number of entries.

We're working on a large contest next...a very, very large one, for the general development community. Without giving too much away, we've acquired a very high profile domain, which will enable us to continue on with a contest that used to be very popular in the past :)

Contests can absolutely work within communities. Try to make them interesting, and try to have something come of it, something useful people can take away from it.

[Jan]

I have seen some interesting competitions conducted at forums, some are successful and generate a lot of interest, others are just a big flop.

I think you need to keep members interested at all times for a competition to be a success and then it is a bonus for both members and forum owners.

If you start a contest in a dying forum, chances are it has already too far gone to generate any interest apart from the few loyal followers you have left.

What are your thoughts on sending a newsletter monthly with links to new (more interesting) threads? IMO, this should be done from the start, if that's a route you want to take. To suddenly start sending one, could be perceived as spam to older members. But if done tactfully, could generate a bit more interest in competitions being run.

[Scott]

What are your thoughts on sending a newsletter monthly with links to new (more interesting) threads? IMO, this should be done from the start, if that's a route you want to take. To suddenly start sending one, could be perceived as spam to older members. But if done tactfully, could generate a bit more interest in competitions being run.

This is something I haven't tried, but am tempted to set up. As a member, I think receiving a newsletter more often than monthly would annoy me, however I see the benefits of sending one out each month as an admin. This raises certain concerns with being considered spam and I would strongly suggest against overusing things like images or even text advertisements (if at all).

One last, important bit of advice about newsletters is to respect the members' wish to be excluded. Most forum software (as far as I know) allows them to select whether they receive newsletters or not, check this out before you start sending any.

[Artashes]

I see a common trace with all the above examples, which is a common mistake with most forum managers. The key is to separate quantity from quality. If one is looking into exploding his forum with massive posts, then the chances are - it will come at the cost of posts' quality.

I have been running various competitions for as long as I can remember, and all of them have been a huge success. My true believe is that if you make it your focus to continuously reinforce the message that the competition is about the content of posts rather than their quantity - it will work like a charm. You should also actively remind your members that spamming is never going to win them anything. Use positive/negative reinforcements immediately when someone acts in good/bad faith of such contests - this sets a great example to the rest.

Scott, I suggest you try running a similar contest, introduce a weekly prize for the most valuable post/member, and report back how it went. Always have a list of ideas, but never forget to brainstorm and select the best one with your forum staff.

Best,

[dojo]

I had some competitions, even now I have a program that would increase activity. They work with a moderate result. I didn't get heaps of posts, but it increased the community value over time.

[SoftDux]

What competition could one run on a web hosting orientated forum?