How can we keep more people active on the forum?

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,

After just having had a discussion with someone through PM about how to keep more people active on the forum, I wanted to ask for your input as well.

Although we'll always have some 1-time posters (which is fine), I'm sure there are still many of people that would love to be part of the community. Either by reading threads, making posts or even by contributing and helping other people. 

Some of the suggestions, were to:

- Post news and updates from the blog and news page (for example in a weekly digest thread)

- Create help, setup pages and guides for the forum (that include Guru videos)

- Linking the community more often and perhaps do exclusive community promotions

So, I wanted to ask you for your feedback and ideas on that as well. If there you have any ideas, or if there are certain areas that you'd like to help with, just let me know (either here or through PM).

Looking forward to your suggestions!

Cheers,

Leonard

[jonsie]

Others may not agree but I go along with the community app. That in itself will bring new members to the forum and retain their interest. Not all obviously but a positive percentage.

Another O2 app and most people will download it if only for the novelty value at first. Making the registration easy and a digit pin log in will. in my opinion, make people more aware of it's existence and boost the membership.

Community promotions and a technical section works for me too.

[Anonymous]

It would indeed be nice to have a forum app!

But I think it would be good to have more exposure on the O2 site as well. Personally I had a lot of trouble finding the forum and I don't think I'm the only one. 

If it's easier for people to find the forum, it will only increase the chance of someone knowing the correct answer/having the right expertise.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

What we do not need IMO is a facebook style forum. If you insist in going that route why not split the forum in to two parts. One part which actually helps people and another part for your "community".

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Excellent idea.

2 separate log ins, one restricted to only forum technical section invovement, the second which allows access to all areas of the "community".

[perksie]

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@O2MACH2 wrote:

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2 separate log ins, one restricted to only forum technical section invovement, the second which allows access to all areas of the "community".

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I'm not sure we get enough visitors to justify that though, surely just different sections is sufficient?

Just now it's showing 4 members and 267 guests, if that's correct.

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,

Excellent ideas so far, so thanks for sharing those. Not everything is technically possible, but we're looking into several of the suggestions as we speak (for example, linking from more areas of the website). 

Since people mainly come here for help, we really should keep things as simple as possible, keep the chatter seperated and try to get more technical guides on the forums. 

Keep the suggestions coming

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hi everyone,

Since people mainly come here for help, we really should keep things as simple as possible, keep the chatter seperated and try to get more technical guides on the forums. 

Keep the suggestions coming

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There's technical guides on the main O2 web site, why duplicate them.
It's direct help people need (discussing the problem), they come here because:
a)  they can't find the solution else where or
b) don't understand the guides or
c) can't be bothered to search for a answer or
d) o2 support has failed them.

Over recent weeks I've seen some posts where the OP need help that only O2 can provide. I haven't seen anyone from O2 offering to speak to the relevant departments to try and resolve the issues!

[Anonymous]

Why do you need an ap?    Just put a shortcut on one of your phone screens

O2s forum does not appear to allow you to stay signed in, leave the site, close the browser and you have to sign in again, the two sign in thingy has already been mentioned and is a pain. 

The two forums I am involved with in running allow me to stay signed in until I sign out, many others do this I know.

People use forums for a variety of reasons as already stated, main being

- they need help and havn't been lucky elsewhere

- they are looking for information

- they are interested in the information and news found on forums

- just general reading

- can throw ideas about to people with similar interests.

The sections have already been trimmed and it hasnt suited everybody, but it is a good

thing to have fewer trawling points to search through, people get fed up when there are too many sections

There are a few people on here that offer good advice in a helpful way and thats good - we all know who these guys are, they are the ambassodors that for this site and I feel O2 should support and be seen to support them more.

New forum users will come back to gain knowledge and it is these people that will grow the forum If you keep their interest.  O2 need to promote this forum more and make people aware.  

There were a couple asking me questions a couple of weeks ago that had never had a provider other than O2 / Cellnet. I suggested they come on here for an answer - they didnt know it exisited !

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Why do you need an ap?    Just put a shortcut on one of your phone screens

O2s forum does not appear to allow you to stay signed in, leave the site, close the browser and you have to sign in again, the two sign in thingy has already been mentioned and is a pain. 

The two forums I am involved with in running allow me to stay signed in until I sign out, many others do this I know.

People use forums for a variety of reasons as already stated, main being

- they need help and havn't been lucky elsewhere

- they are looking for information

- they are interested in the information and news found on forums

- just general reading

- can throw ideas about to people with similar interests.

The sections have already been trimmed and it hasnt suited everybody, but it is a good

thing to have fewer trawling points to search through, people get fed up when there are too many sections

There are a few people on here that offer good advice in a helpful way and thats good - we all know who these guys are, they are the ambassodors that for this site and I feel O2 should support and be seen to support them more.

New forum users will come back to gain knowledge and it is these people that will grow the forum If you keep their interest.  O2 need to promote this forum more and make people aware.  

There were a couple asking me questions a couple of weeks ago that had never had a provider other than O2 / Cellnet. I suggested they come on here for an answer - they didnt know it exisited !

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Out of all the forums I use, most have mobile versions of the site, and some have specific apps. I find the ones that have specific apps are the easiest, more user friendly due to them been tailored more to the smaller screen of the smartphone, for example, larger buttons etc.

Admittedly, I would expect that most of the regular forum posters would use an app more than a new member who was joining the forum to seek help, but that aside, it would make it easier more user friendly for regular forum posters to reply to a post with a answer or indeed seek help themselves with an app.

[Anonymous]

Great suggestions again. Thanks for that.

@reader:

You're spot on and I fully agree. We're looking into almost all of the things that you've mentioned in your post. However, some of the more technical areas take a bit of time, but I'm convinced we'll get there. I'll give your points some more thought over the weekend and think about where we can improve.

@npr:

You're right, it probably doesn't make sense to duplicate them, especially because it'll be very hard to keep the pages the same across different parts of the website. So how do you feel about iframes or FAQs linking to certain parts of the website? That might be quite helpful for people visiting the forum for the first time.

You're also right in saying that we can't resolve every single question on the forum and that people sometimes need a specific department to help them. If there are general, ongoing issues, I'm happy to chase the relevant departments until we get a solution. 

[Anonymous]

I was thinking of a stick post for each sections with links to relevant help pages. And don't restrict it to just O2 pages, I think you know Oliver's and my web sites ( other ISP's support certainly do )

Probably best to make it a closed (admin) thread with just the one post. IMO people tend to ignore stickies with many posts, can't be bothered to search through for the info they need. -- Keep things simple.

If there are general, ongoing issues, I'm happy to chase the relevant departments until we get a solution.

Excellent, think you'll have your work cut out, we get the impression here that O2 departments are not good dealing with things off script.