Forum Strategies: Emulating the Corporate World
I have seen a growing trend lately of forums acquiring other forums and unlike the old days where they would redirect to the new one or just call it a sister forum, they are just merging the posts and members. One that has been using this technique with a great deal of success is Admin Fusion. They have been acquiring similar forums like mad and it has really expanded their market share and livened up their forum. I witnessed the original merger firsthand and I really was amazed how fluid it was. I think there was one issue with any active polls not working but that was quite minor. Here is the the notification from their most recent acquisition around a week ago:
yfs1,
We have done it again, AdminFusion is merging with another forum admin community! We wanted to notify you in case you have an account at both forums, www.whichbb.com and www.adminfusion.com. If you do have an account at both forums, check these accounts to make sure that the email addresses are the same. If they are not, change them so that they are. Please do this by this Sunday, June 9th at the latest.
If you have not yet heard about the merger, you may read this thread for more information:
http://www.adminfusion.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8363We are really looking forward to this and hope you are as well. Stop by and let us know what you think
Regards,
AdminFusion Staff
I really like this strategy and I think its the future. Right now you can pick just about any niche and there are hundreds if not thousands of forums on the subject. God forbid you take a look at the SEO/Webmaster world where there are hundreds of thousands active forums.
The old trend of successful forums buying little ones to try to get their members to migrate was one that just couldn’t last in today’s market. By almost merging the forum by force, you breathe a lot of life into the existing forum. On the technical side, merging two forums couldn’t be easier these days especially if you are using vBulletin. There are even a growing number of merging option for phpBB now emerging. It has prompted me to make up a short list of related forums to make offers on as I see it money well spent. After all, the real value in a forum is not it’s PR or number of pages indexed but its member base.
Comment by Ryan
Posted on July 10, 2006 at 8:15 pm
I just wanted to say thank you for your kind words, yfs1
Merging has indeed been an excellent tool for us to use at AF for various reasons really, and you’ve highlighted the most significant. Merging with another forum similar to yours (big or small) not only means that you are gaining members and content, but you are also gaining traffic (can be substantial) *and* getting rid of a competitor.
If the opportunity arises, I highly recommend doing this - and if it doesn’t come knocking at your door, you should contact other forum owners to see if they are interested in doing something like this. If you ever want more advice/guidance on merging with another forum, feel free to ask me over at AF…we’ve now completed our second merger and who knows, there could be more on the horizon.
Comment by Rob
Posted on July 18, 2006 at 4:06 am
Another very well articulated article on a great topic; nicely outlined strategy of AdminFusion and how they’re moving forward instead of talking about it. This is something TWT and few others have done seamlessly - kudos to AdminFusion and best of luck!
Comment by Dsw
Posted on October 21, 2006 at 9:30 pm
That is indeed a great resource for forum owners. I also operate many forums, and I have found it very helpful.