What do you do when membership drops off?

Usually start posting to ad sites like an idiot, and begging people to recruit their friends >.>;


-Cat

 

Before campaigning and advertising, revisit your basic principles / fundamentals. You want to think about how users move through your forum - that is if your marketing is successful and your site gets a lot of exposure, you don't want members running into brick walls and not signing up or signing up and not visiting again. So step through your site as if you're a new member and make sure that things are easy to find, that questions are answers as they come to your mind or the information is easy to find, etc and so on

 

My site went through a really rough time where there were just two or three of us playing actively. It was that way for months! We kept playing and brainstorming and having a good time and eventually our numbers rose again!

I've noticed that people come and go. It's a thing on forum roleplay where some people jump on - play for a few weeks or a month or two and then disappear. You're probably just having one of those times where people are super busy and just can't really get involved (it is finals season and vacation season after all!).

 

All of this is really good advice. I am in the boat that we have 6 core members that have been there for a couple years. I co-own the site and I do about half of the driving for the content. I am very dedicated to expanding our player base but my RL job gets in the way of that.

 

I know exactly how you feel about the issue with people dropping off the forums. I myself have had over 30 roleplayers at one point and now one of my forums is down rp 6 and all but myself are inactive.

 

You wanna come over to my steam RP group. We just had a bit of a rough patch but we could use more members.

 

Sure just PM me the link I am heading to work and I'll take a look at it later tonight.

 

I usually clean out, update the site, talk to remaining members and see where their heads are at. Sometimes, unfortunately it's better to just let it die and rebuild anew - especially if you've lost the majority of your players. I hope that you're able to turn it around and invite a whole new crowd <3

 

Keep on posting and keep on advertising. All boards have quiet phases, I think boards tend to die mostly when the administrators give up. People filter back I think.

 

Generally when activity drops I create a sitewide event or open a new section of the site. That tends to stir a little excitement. It's the same strategy MMOs use to get players back ;)

 

I think obviously keep advertising try and find new places, and ways to get attention. Also talk to, really talk to the current members and just like someone said, see where they are at because you cannot carry a site alone, not even with two people I've tried for months and months eventually it's just too much. One of the problems I think when there's just two people left participating is the appearance to any outsider that it's a cliquey situation 'oh these two people are only posting together' not realizing that we just want more people, plus it's tempting to just communicate with one another and not in somewhere guests can access.

 

Continue while trying to make things better. We always continued to exist even when the only members were my staff and I.

 

Advertise like crazy. But I do that regardless. There's only one way to get the word out there and it's by advertising.

 

I just keep advertising and finding different outlets to advertise in (such as paid advertisements on resource sites, tumblr directories, different resource forums, sites that look like they're dying, affiliating with like-sites). It also helps keeping an ad in your signature at various resource sites. I also make sure to keep posting with whoever is left and provide a generally positive atmosphere. Activity breeds activity. Whenever we get new members, I make sure to be proactive with them until they feel comfortable to branch out to others.

 

Word of mouth and advertisement on various directories will help. If there is a voting system, be sure your current members help by voting daily.

Often if you have close bonds with other creators of the site and the first members, they offer for their friends to join and it’s a chain reaction.

Sometimes having social media can help give you exposure, but member turn out is very low in my experience

 

Maybe incentivize voting with IC rewards?

 

I always end up back in the soul-crushing grind of Advertising and hoping. Facebook groups for roleplayers are a good way to reach hundreds at the drop of a hat.

 

This is a really interesting discussion. As a lurker, I'm always disappointed when an RPG with great characters and a fun setting grind to halt due to inactivity. I'm not sure how much of a following the average RPG has but would writers be encouraged to stick around if they were aware that a significant audience followed their stories? Perhaps fans could help support their favorite community by word-of-mouth (e.g. historical fiction fans mentioning the game on history-related forms)?

 

Doing a few extra posts and upping my advertising campaigns.

 

I would love to just have fans and lurkers that encouraged the writing. However, my experience is that lurkers just lurk and they don't encourage. So they become just a name in the group and most of the other writers don't even know they are there. And so it does nothing to encourage the frequency of posts. Because this is a hobby, I find myself caught between trying to poke writers into posting and also keeping myself from being pushy because I understand RL comes first. So I wind up updating things in the group to freshen things up and running advertisements where I can.

But, yeah, if the lurkers would say something encouraging as an audience... I'm almost 100% positive our writers would put more into things. Just my opinion.