For those who are not familiar with the guy in the mask, and the red indian…
That’s the Lone Ranger and Tonto, his trusty sidekick. This is probably before the days of Batman and Robin, but how does this tie in with the topic “Momentum”?
When you are building your community, you have to understand that it’s very different as compared to starting out as a publishing business or a profit making venture. You can survive as the Lone Ranger for a while when you are starting your own business online.
When it comes to forum building, most new forum admins are still in the lone ranger mindset, and find it hard to get the initial momentum going, they spend days and night installing, configuring, tweaking and designing their forums, and then…they will message all their friends on MSN, ICQ, email and ask them all to join the forum to help “support”.
The friends will all help out by registering and posting a few hello messages, after which, since the forum theme doesn’t suit all of them, the forum will die a painful and very quick death. A few solutions to getting rid of this momentum problem is to:
1. Look for people who are most interested in your forum niche.
Why waste your time telling people who are not interested in Internet Marketing, or Adsense to join your Adsense forum? Work smart by targetting people who are already interested in your niche. They can be found in your email list, other theme-related forums, interest groups off-line.
E.g. If you’re starting a fish forum, you can find interested members at the fishing pier where you frequent.
2. Build your organic launch party.
An organic launch party is a group who is dedicated to helping your forum get off the ground and bypass the stale period where the forum can be in the beginning stages. Launch party members can be committed to help out by posting 2-3 threads a day for a 2 week period, after which you can be sure there is some content that new visitors can read, and be enticed to become a member. So how do you get launch party members? You can phone, email, talk to potential people on the streets, through online social networks such as friendster (search for related interests).
3. Keep your forum really small (at first!)
New forum admins love to create many folders and categories when they first start out, simply because their interests have many subcomponents and niches. This is probably the most biggest and common mistake anyone can make as it can make the forum look very empty and desolate. And when people see that a site / forum is “dead”, they won’t waste even a second of their time looking at your category descriptions… Start out with 5 categories or less, build up enough posts and threads then slowly segment later when there are too many threads being posted. You won’t want to hold a party with 3 friends in a huge castle right?
4. Make the effort to make friends with your members.
When new members register onto your forums, take the initiative to ask for his / her name and what his interests / goals / dreams are. By taking note of what they want in their own lives, they will feel more attached to your forum, and have vested interests in contributing to your site. Be personal, friendly and care for your member’s needs and wants, and they will repay you a hundred-fold.
5. Encourage your team members to be as friendly as you are.
It’s quite amazing how a person can give off a certain aura (energy) online, by the way he “talks” and uses smilies 
in his postings. When people can feel that you are friendly and sincere, they will want to stay on and stick around. Encourage members of your administration team to welcome new-comers like they would welcome old friends, and you will build a very warm and enviable culture within your community.
