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Forumotion Interviews : Today "Pet Society" |
Hello, Following on from our interviews with founders of successful forums, I present you today Pet Society, run by its founder Mr Mayor, who has succeeded with his team, the great performance to get 4,600+ users that have posted 223,000+ posts. How did they manage this performance? This is what we will be seeing below...! 1. Tell us about your forum. What do you think is the secret of its success? We created Pet Society Fan Community (www.pet-society.co.uk) just under 1 year ago, the main aim of the site is a fun, friendly and safe enviroment for fans of the popular game of Pet Society to come, chat pick up hints, tips, guides, chat with other players, trade play games and much more. The key to the sites success and fast growth is i believe giving our members everything in one place instead of having to jump from site to site, we also make it feel like a home from home and all the members and staff are more like one big family, we always say that we are "By The Fans, For The Fans" giving all our members a say in what happens at the site, how it's run what we have what we don't right down to the look and feel of the site our members are involved. 2. After its creation, what are the tools that you deem necessary and that you were lacking to advance and publicize your forum? Then, what strategies have you followed to solve this problem ? And which of these methods have been the best? Setting up the site was pretty straight forward with all the useful guides published by Forumotion, and help by members of the forum too. We removed our portal page after a few months and replaced it with our own homepage and site to combine the 2 in one place, it also suited our site better, one thing we believe would add to the forums is a games arcade which we are always asked about by members, it would in my experience keep members active longer and keep them coming back to keep that top score! 3. What are the major decisions that have really improved the popularity of your forum? Do you have tips, ideas, methods you use to maintain interest, activity and loyalty of your members? Right from the start of Pet Society Fan Community (www.pet-society.co.uk) we decided we wanted to be different to other fan sites of the game, by this we wanted to combine everything available through other sites in 1 place, also we tried to keep things simple and straight forward and make the site feel and look fun and be personal to our members (simply by the colour scheme and text and images of our users pets from the game makes it just that). We always run competitions for our members changing on a weekly basis to win items from the game, we host quiz nights in our chatroom and have other forums on the site such as a "TV & Movies" and "Music" to keep members entertained and we have recently added a new "Agony Aunt" forum also into this which is proving to be popular with our members, we also offer members to create their very own groups within the forum which can be about anything (one is to do with the Film Twilight). Best tips are to keep the content fresh and exciting, make it easy for new members to find their feet and give members a reason to choose you over the competition. 4. How much time do you spend per day to take care of your forum? You get help? Currently i spend around 6 hours a day running the forum with my team of staff, my role is mainly behind the scenes keeping on top of updaing the site etc...while the rest of the team are chatting with members, playing games, watching the forums to ensure they are safe for members and keeping the place clean and tidy, our current team is around 10 members all of which do a fantastic job, could'nt wish for a better team! 5. Based on your experience, what advice would you give other webmasters who wish to see their forums as active and successful as yours? Keep it fresh, Be fun, Keep shouting and don't be afraid to be different. If another site like has a cool feature, can you use it? Can you make it better? Will it be of any benefit? Ensure your content is always kept up to date and fresh and relevant to the topic of your site. And keep the site fun, make it easy for new members to come in and make them feel welcome. 6. What would you have done at forum creation (a thing which you may not think in the beginning by lack of experience) that would have made you gain time and traffic more quickly? A simple and easy to remember domain relevant to the topic of your site, ensure you get your website listed on the search engines and you have plenty of easy keywords also relevant to your site. Shout to everyone and anyone about your site, facebook is a fantastic place, put your link in your status and get people to like or comment about it then it gets displayed to their friends too and it can go on and on. You don't need money to be noticed! Thanks to for Mr Mayor for his participation, feel free to visit his forum : www.pet-society.co.uk  Forumotion Team |
Last edited by Typlo on February 9th 2010, 11:30 am; edited 1 time in total
