Are you currently running your own message board? Have you been thinking about starting one? For those who can answer either of these questions with a “yes,” I want to share some of my best tips for running successful forums. These have been collected thanks to my years of personal successes and failures during the golden age of the dial-up BBS and the modern era of Web-accessible forums. Why be stubborn when you can learn from the mistakes of people like me?

Successful Forums Tip #2: Got personality?

I’ve got some news for the administrators of at least 99% of the forums on the Web: nobody will join your lame forums just because you installed them! Additionally, nobody will join them just because you devote your forums to a popular topic. Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let’s discuss this in a more constructive manner.

One of the things we must all grudgingly accept is that there is rarely anything new under the Sun. That is to say, even if you think you have a new idea, the odds are overwhelmingly high that someone else already thought of it. But that’s nothing to be ashamed of. That’s why you can’t copyright ideas; you can only copyright one person’s presentation of them.

So where am I going with this? My point is that if you are going to open your own forums devoted to a topic, you need to get used to the idea that someone else has done the same thing before. Even if nobody has, someone will horn their way into your niche as soon as you end up being successful, so you might as well assume that you aren’t alone. Besides, if you need a monopoly over an idea to succeed with it, then don’t bother because you don’t have much to offer anyone in the first place.

Allow me to demonstrate. There are a million forums out there devoted to computers, hacking, anime, music, and everything else imaginable. Many are even populated by fully qualified experts in their respective fields. At this point, you should be wondering, why do some succeed while others drop off the face of the Web? It comes down to one concept: personality.

The thing that will make your forums special and make them different than anything anyone else can possibly do is giving them your own personality! If you can’t bring that to your forums, you won’t bring many members either. Maybe you discuss things in a thought-provoking manner. Maybe you find humor in unique places. Maybe you are a problem solver. Whatever your personality, it is the thing that will make your forums special and set them apart from all the others.

To see this and other tips in action, feel free to stop by my personal forums, TechDiscussions.com, or Lockergnome’s own forums.