What do you do when membership drops off?

Stupid question: what is a recruitment drive?

Smart follow-up: how effective are recruitment drives?

 

Thread created to pull the subject for further conversation- Recruitment Drives in Business & Marketing

 

As a site owner this is the worse feeling in the word to watch your member activity drop, but sadly there isn't much you can do when it comes to having real life things people have to do. The best thing is to keep your head high, keep advertising and keep pushing for new players. Sooner or later they shall appear.

 

I dealt with this on my own site as well. The site was decently active, only had about 30 registered members as we were less than a year old but a lot of the people worked together really well and drove the activity. Back in 2013 I had some things come up in my personal life and all of a sudden, without me to drive the board for about a month, everything just died without me. I've recently come back to it and I'm pretty driven on reviving it, I'm just trying to advertise everywhere I can. I emailed my list of registered members that we were back, added in a ton of new content + areas to play in, gave bonuses to returning + new characters and referral incentives, and planned 6 months worth of content updates to maintain interest. I'm just hoping it'll be enough. It's only been about 2 days and we've had no new members and only 1 member return outside of the staff team so far, but it's still early and i'm optimistic!

 

It makes me sad to hear that a site's activity died or tapered off because the admin had IRL issues to deal with. It happens all too often. Members take time off when they need to and the activity isn't hurt- but let an admin, especially the owner take some time for IRL issues and people stop participating.I will never understand why this happens.

 

Don't panic: keep pushing. Membership and activity will fluctuate across the year, and that's perfectly normal. Reach out to members that were previously active, and invite them back. It's amazing what a personal invitation can achieve.

Other than that, just keep advertising and getting your name out there. Don't give up until you're no longer in love with the site. That's the key.

 

Go on ad campaigns; Reddit works very well.

 

Advertising is a big one, but once you have a few extra members, site plots can be a great way to drum up interest. Also, OOC events for fun holidays etc. You want something to keep people coming back every day. Most importantly, lead by example - if you want others to post daily, make sure YOU are posting daily and getting involved! :)

 

Better 5 people then no one like on my forum cause I have just create new one and I still need edit it and add more things but it always end no one wanna join even if I advertise.

 

I don't think there is much you can do in cases like this than to keep trying. Word of mouth, affiliation, social media, etc...all of that is all you can do.

 

When it does come to member drop offs, I generally start advertising again via social media and directory sites like this one.

 

I advertise and network. I forget that sometimes I let myself get pulled into so much RL that I neglect the adverts... but I try to keep them updated and going out bi-monthly. I also personally reach out to folks who have gone on LOAs or are just lurking to remind them that they are welcome to hop back in. Even folks who have been penalized in our group for doing things they shouldn't have, we give them more than one chance and welcome them back from time to time. I've had several return like that. And of course, I encourage word of mouth advertising as well.

More than anything, I keep in mind that our groups are not everyone's cup of tea. So you know... it is what it is...

 

Advertise, advertise, advertise. Tumblr, here, other RPG directories. Start up a great site wide event. Give new players incentives if you can.

 

This is happening to me at the moment mostly because the RP community in fantasyy wrestling is quite saturated. I created my own roleplay fed because the style that has been implemented in the last few years is quite shitty where the weekly events and such are mostly weak and not well written. I love to give the feel to the user that he is watching a real wrestling match with actual psychology and everytimes he scrolls down the hype builds towards the end. I use the play-by-play so I develop the characters on the show according with their roleplays and adapt their psychology to the bout itself. What would he do on this situation?! And a lot of virtua wrsetling feds lost all of this. I'm a trained wrestler I know other prople aren't as soon as I read 2\3 paragraphs. But before people weren't trained wrestlers either but could put a decent match and decent storylines and not copies of copies of copies. But withouthhaving anybody to sing it's quite hard to get a fed up and running as people open the site don't see anybody and just close.

 

Two words: ad blitz. I also like to look at my board. What's working, what's not, what fixes could I make to make the lore more accessible to everyone (my board is lore heavy and it's probably overwhelming)

I try not to beat myself up, either. Sometimes activity drops because real life hits everyone hard at more or less the same time. Sometimes you can do everything right and still lose members/activity.

 

Happens for the site I've been on for the past 3 years and I'm a team member now with four others. We put up a site wide plot for four groups of members recently and activity picked up. It makes people want to join them too to get in on the action. Everyone gets hyped since our site is known for these plots.

 

*here to listen to all the advice*

 

it stinks when that happens--usually i send out emails about activity and if that doesn't help, i revamp the site, delete anything old and try and import new things

 

This happens to all sites one time or another. The best thing you can do is keep trying and look through to see why they might leave. Sometimes you need to spice things up. Try world events, or new races/clans/groups. Sometimes it can be as simple as RL eating at peoples moods or creativity.

 

Site events to get the remaining member base active again, followed by lots of advertising. Keeping your active thread counts up is important!