How to increase level of participation on this forum

I think the indiblogger platform is a great christmas gift from indiblogger team to all indian bloggers. Unfortunatelt the level of participation seems too low with only a handful of us continuing to discuss among ourselves. The quality of discussion is the best I have ever found on any forum. But how do we bring in more people to participate here?

Hey dude, agreed - the quality of discussion here is great, but only from a handful. We've been working on the suggestions from bloggers thread by thread, and now we're going to work on this problem. A few ideas off the top of my head, which I'm going to implement immediately:

• Promote the forum across IndiBlogger.in - including all email notifications and alerts.
• Create an RSS feed for the forum as a whole, and for each individual feed.
• Use the Tell-a-Friend widget across all pages so threads can be shared via social networks and automatically posted to blogspot & wordpress.
• For existing users - we'll put in a page where you can keep track of all topics you've posted, and all topics you've participated in.

I've stuck this topic on the home page so more people will send in their ideas.

Awesome ideas Renie. I am confident that these steps will increase participation in this forum. Hoping that you will roll out these features soon.

Well I would also like to add some Ideas ... From my point of View I have seen forums,blogs with Profile Pic in the Comments like the WP Blogs have Gravatar Icons beside Comments, perform much better that text based Forums. I don't know why, but maybe people like to comment to a person they can see. People tend to ' participate in forums ' or ' comment in blogs '  only if either the content seems really good to them or they get backlinks by commenting. This might sound Odd, but is the truth, There must be a Reason for people to Come Back here to participate in the Forum. Since this is not Orkut  people will take part either only to make some sort of advertisement of their blog or may be genuienly wanting to make this forum successful. How much participation can a person give in a Blogging based Disscussion. There should be a Lot of Interensting Off-Topics. There should be some Contests ... In that way more Bloggers will be induced to Post about it in their Blogs and drive its readers to this Blog. The best way to get Active Participation is to Invite TOP Bloggers like Amit Agarwal at labnol.org to share his Views & Comments About this Forum.. and ask him to post about it in his Blog. _______________________________ Regards, Debajyoti Das - Realtrix

Renie, I would like an e-mail to be generated if someone responds to a thread that I am interested in. Basically, a small box appears at the bottom of each thread and I should be able to check it, if I want a trigger (similar to Xing, if you are aware of that platform).

Its growing Slowly, It will take over the indian Blogsphere scene very soon Charms Shanker BakShi www.shankerbakshi.com

@BinaryDay - the stuff I mentioned has been completed:

• Promote the forum across IndiBlogger.in - including all email notifications and alerts.
• Create an RSS feed for the forum as a whole, and for each individual feed.
• Use the Tell-a-Friend widget across all pages so threads can be shared via social networks and automatically posted to blogspot & wordpress.
• For existing users - we'll put in a page where you can keep track of all topics you've posted, and all topics you've participated in.

Yay!

@Debyajit - your ideas require some thinking! I do agree with getting top bloggers to participate, but it's not always an easy task! :-) About the contests, let's see if we can integrate that idea with the ranking system being discussed here.

@Amitabh - we're going to work on your suggestion as soon as we give bloggers the option to edit the topics they have posted. (suggestion sent in by Archit)

@Shanker - We certainly hope so - and we're a lot more confident now that we have a system for all bloggers to work together!

Create badges for IndiBlogger forums as well and invite members to post them on their blogs. Each Indiblogger member has to link to forums in at least one of their posts. I suppose these actions can be taken up.

Update: Bloggers can now edit the topics they have posted.

@Suneel, I like your thinking - but to take it further, how about a widget bloggers can put on their blogs? This widget can retrieve the latest threads from the forum, or the replies to a particular thread (of the blogger's choosing). What say you?

Widget is brilliant!

@Renie..awesome work and responsiveness man...

All your current initiative seem to driven towards creating awareness. Rightly so because that is always the first goal of any marketing campaign. However you should start thinking about how to create passinate users out of people who come here. We will definitely gain from more people like Amitabh for sure :)

To be successful, Every product needs to solve a need better than anything else. I shall like all of us to answer a simple questions i.e Why do we participate on this forum and why will we continue to participate here.

For me, I love this forum because it is the only one that allows me to communicate with other bloggers. For a change I do not feel like an alien or rather as I said earlier, I feel like an alien in a land of aliens :) I will definitely like it if you can make it easier for me to connect to other bloggers.

Others please chip in with your most important reason for using this forum.

Binary,

I am with you man!

I have particpated in other forums and always felt like a stranger. This is my first shot at an Indian forum and to be honest I was a little skeptic at the beginning. That is rapidly disappearing, I must say.

The only thing we must guard against - the typical Indian tendency (me included) to start with a bang and end with a whimper.

Wwe must get other sto contribute as well. The true success of this forum will be when the threads get added or updated every second. Come on! With a population as big as ours, that should not be impossible.

Renie, where are the 4000+ Indian bloggers? Possible to give them one  more shout?

@Amitav,

That is precisely the reason I am suggesting that we define the value proposition well. Like a discussion about monetization tricks that work in India or how indian blogs can dominate digg etc. That reminds me, we need a solid search function for this forum as I remember some really cool discussion about how we can dominate digg, was going on but now I can not find it any more.

The power of indiblogger can be guessed from the fact that there are 94 PR5 and 8 PR6 blogs present here. Those guys can definitely teach us newbies, a thing or 2 about blogging desi style :)

@Amitabh -you'll now find an option at the top right of every topic to subscribe to email alerts for the same. Hope this is what you were talking about!

For existing users - we'll put in a page where you can keep track of all topics you've posted, and all topics you've participated in.

That would be most useful. I keep losing track of where and what I have posted in the forum. :)

@Pavan - check out the "My Topics" button! :-)

Very sorry. Since I was new here, I didn't notice that button. But now, that is how I got here. :)

Well, I like this forum because, this is the first place I'm feeling "at home". All other forums didnt appeal to me so much so as to post more than 2 or 3 threads. After following the discussion here, I can think of one thing. Plain advertising might get us visitors, but not members. To increase the participation, threads should be posted "very" regularly and should be responded to as well. Many threads here are in the "Review my Blog" category. So that speaks volumes about the intentions of many who come here. To change this, all the above ideas work very well, but slowly. As for increasing the speed of participation, I suggest that bloggers come by their own interest, so that this forum will be consisting of "Lively" people and not just zombies. Best we bloggers can do is word-of-mouth advertising primarily. Write posts in your blogs saying that it is easily possible for people to do anything, as it really is, so that its not just another advertisement speaking only the tagline. The readers should get a bigger hint as well!

Now you can follow updates to this forum on Twitter!

@Sriharsha - this is the first place I'm feeling "at home" - that makes us feel all warm inside. Thank you!

Ah! A place I can still visit even if I can't post anything on my blog. I kinda feel like this is where I belong. I have been to MANY technical and other forums. But I always felt like I was not "one of the pack". Here, it is like I am among people who are just like me. :) Very nice effort. Much appreciated. :)

Care to take a Look?