My Favorite Tricks for Building Community with vBulletin

January 29, 2008 – 2:20 pm

vBulletin out of the box is pretty darn good. You can do so many things with this script just by playing with the settings it’s just amazing. But if you’re building an enthusiast site and you want to set yourself a part from the competition you might have to try a few tricks and possibly try some add-ons to help grow your community and generate more return visitors. Here are a few tricks that have worked well for me over the years and even more recently.

- Create an “Off Topic” forum

I’m sure this isn’t new to you. Most forums have an off topic area these days. But the trick is to use this forum to connect with your members on a personal level. Start some threads asking members to post photos of themselves or have them post information about their other hobbies. Talk about current events or something controversial in your market. You’re bound to get someone interested. Run some mini contests or competitions among the members to get them talking more. The more you take advantage of this forum to interact with your members the more they’ll come back to interact with each other and the activity will spill over into your other forums.

vBulletin out of the box is pretty darn good. You can do so many things with this script just by playing with the settings it’s just amazing. But if you’re building an enthusiast site and you want to set yourself a part from the competition you might have to try a few tricks and possibly try some add-ons to help grow your community and generate more return visitors. Here are a few tricks that have worked well for me over the years and even more recently.

- Create an Introduction forum

This is usually where new people will post first. Be sure to post an intro yourself and give everyone after you a sample to follow. When you do get people introducing themselves be the first to reply and welcome them - take this opportunity to ask them some questions that they can reply to. Anything to keep them interested. It would be a good idea to create a Welcome Email upon user registration that points people to this forum.

- Add a Photo Gallery

This is critical if you run an automotive site. Everyone wants to share photos of their car these days. Set up a photo gallery and hold monthly contests for the best “XXXX” of the month. Change it up every now and then and feature the winners on your homepage. This is great for creating interest and rewarding members.

- Send out Newsletters to Keep Members Engaged

The more personal the better. Try not to sound like a corporate talking head. You want you members to see you as “one of the guys”. Highlight and link to featured discussions that you think will attract the most interest. Mention the featured Photo Gallery winners and point out members for various reasons. Send these out once per month or every other month. More frequent than that doesn’t tend to generate any better results. Keep in mind that you’ll want to give your members the option to stop receiving your newsletters by having them change their account options. You don’t want to get labeled as a spammer.

In vBulletin you can actually choose members with low (or no) posts in the forums. Send special emails to those users inviting them to participate. You might want to say something along the lines of “We’ve noticed you registered but haven’t posted in our forums yet. You might want to check out XXXX discussion”.

- Add Inline Video to Forum Posts

This is a really cool add-on that will automatically convert links that point to YouTube and other video sites and display the videos inline right in the posts. It will work for all previous posts as well as any new posts. This modification is great because it will give you the ability to start a thread asking your members to share their favorite videos without them having to click on links that leave your site. You can find this modification here.

- Add More Personal Information to Posts and Profile

Every time a member of your site posts something in the forums you’ll see their username, join date, post count, and a couple other profile fields next to their post. I’ve found that adding a few other fields to the user profile system (and later to their posts) will help members get to know each other a little better. Simply adding fields for the type of car they drive, what modifications they have done to their car, or any other information that you think they’d like to share with the community would be worth adding. This is very easy to do and will add a new dimension to your forums. You can find out how to do it here.

- Try the vB Blog add-on

If your forum site is still relatively new this might be something to hold off on for a little while until you get a good group of members. The vB Blog add-on is great for allowing users who may not know how to set up a blog themselves but would like to start one. It plugs right into vBulletin and all registered members of your site can use it. The great thing about it is that it will give your members a reason to link others to your site as they share their blogs with others.