Competition Ideas To Increase Activity

Discussion in 'General Chat' started by Kevin Muldoon, Nov 10, 2011.

  1. Kevin Muldoon WordPress Fanatic!

    Whilst the competitions have proved popular so far, most of the people who have been taking part have not been active in the forum. I'm keen for future competitions to encourage activity in the forum in some way.

    Obviously there are downsides to this. Competitions that reward the highest poster usually result in a group of people contributing dozens of poor quality posts and winning the competition ahead of people who contributed high quality posts.

    I would prefer to give prizes out to those who contribute the 'best posts' i.e. posts that are detailed and encourage discussion. In the past I have seen this cause some problems too though, with some people who contributed good posts disappointed that their post wasn't chosen as the best.

    In the end, I believe that any competition that tries to force members to participate in the forum for a prize is flawed due to these issues and chances are that those who do contribute during the competition will leave afterwards.

    Nevertheless, I am of the opinion that the forums are the best place to host competitions on WP Mods (rather than the newsletter and Facebook etc) and are the best way to encourage activity in the forums until they reach a level where it is self-sustaining.

    I want to continue to host great competitions here on a regular basis therefore I'd love to hear your suggestions on how we can host fun competitions that encourage people to sign up and encourage them to participate here.

    Also, do you prefer prizes to be awarded individually or would you prefer less competitions with more prizes. For example, I have around 15+ domains to giveaway. Would you prefer 15 separate competitions for these domains or a large domain competition where the prizes are awarded to the top ten winners/participants.

    I'd love to hear your thoughts on this so please leave a reply if you have time :)

    Thanks,
    Kevin
  2. Shiva Chettri Member

    I actually cannot think of much ideas for a competition through which you can increase activity because like you said even if you organize a competition for quantity or even quality posting, those who participate in it might be there only for the time period of the competition. The best thing you could do is to make people refer more and more people and more the amount of people, there are more chances that active people may register. Just my two cents.

    And about the less competition or more competition thing, my preference would be like: For plugins and themes stuff individual giveaways are better but for domains, I would prefer a bulk giveaway. That my personal preference though. :)
  3. Kevin Muldoon WordPress Fanatic!

    Thanks for the feedback Shiva.

    This forum software unfortunately doesn't have a referral system built in (yet). There's an add-on available that allows referrals but I believe it only lets you refer members by email. It doesn't give you a unique referral link so it couldn't be placed on your website, Twitter etc. A referral competition is a good idea though.
  4. Rison Member

    I would prefer individual competitions. :)

    And is it possible to impose a minimum word count for the posts? That way short post like 'thanks' or 'great post' cannot be posted. That way the winner can still be chosen based on the number of posts. What do you think?
  5. Kevin Muldoon WordPress Fanatic!

    Unfortunately there's no way to do that. I wouldn't want to adjust the forum in any way so that people can only leave long replies because sometimes a short reply is all that is necessary.

    Also, any competition that rewards the most posts is just going to encourage lots of poor posts. I don't want that. I'd rather encourage quality rather than quantity.
    Shiva Chettri likes this.
  6. Rison Member

    Of course, quality always win over quantity. But is there a way to measure quality in forum posts?
  7. Shiva Chettri Member

    I do not think there is any way to measure the quality of posts, I think that can only be done manually by the admin and mods.
  8. Rison Member

    Exactly! That is why I suggested word limiting posts. But as Kevin said, some times small posts do add value. Hence we can only just quality manually. :)
  9. Kevin Muldoon WordPress Fanatic!

    That would be very time consuming. I write articles every day for my own websites and others. I just can't justify spending this kind of time for a competition.
  10. Rison Member

    Hmm.. So we have to maintain the quality, yet make it automated? So what do you suggest? :confused:
  11. Kevin Muldoon WordPress Fanatic!

    I don't mind some moderation however if over 100 people are taking part in a competition as it could mean I have to check thousands of posts. It's just not practical.

    A referral contest would be good but there is no referral contest built in. If we are doing individual contests, perhaps I could simple create some good discussion topics. I'll try this tomorrow. I'm going to post a domain name competition. What I can do is pose a WordPress related question and the best answer/reply gets the prize :)
    Rison likes this.
  12. Rison Member

    Nice! I'll be sure to check this out. :)
  13. Many of the members are only active in posting replies to posts in Competitions and Discounts Section of the forum but do not bother to partcipate in any other section of this forum
    May be next competitions should be targeted on getting users to actively participate in all the sections of the forum, atleast not only in the competitions section!!

    I prefer individual competitions.Why should a single person take away everything?!

    As the number of users and posts increase, may be you can choose some active members of the forum as moderators (through a poll or some other way)
  14. Kevin Muldoon WordPress Fanatic!

    Yes I'll definitely add moderators in the future. There's no need for them at the moment as the forums are still quiet. Once activity reaches a level that I can't moderate competently myself, I will appoint some moderators to help out.

    Yes we need to think of some good competition ideas to encourage people to post here regularly :)
  15. Jarkko New Member

    This is a good idea. After all, we're into WP things and problems and that's why we're partly here too. I know, I won't win anything in those competitions but there might be some very good ideas in the replies. Even a post ideas for Kevin hehe..
  16. AMYunus New Member

    About the best post, there is a way to measure it. Combine the views + replies + likes.

    How about limiting prize into minimal post ?
    For example, if there is a prize worth $100, members who have posts less than 100 posts, could not join ( or even open / read the detail of ) the competition forum thread. How about that ?
    It would increase the forum views. And to avoid the junk posts, maybe there must be any minimal limit of characters / words of posting. So I can not post `I have liked them`. It is very short and one liner. Maybe you have to post minimal 3 sentences or more than 10 words and so forth.

    And next problem about the ideas is is there any add ons to fulfill that technique ? :confused:
  17. Kevin Muldoon WordPress Fanatic!

    Unfortunately, there is no in build stats program in the forum software as yet. They are adding a stats option in the next update though I don't know how in depth it will be.

    I just don't have the time to track views, replies and likes manually. Nor would I want to if I did have the time :)

    I think a minimum post level to enter a competition is a good idea. We can make some competitions open to everyone and restrict other competitions to members with a set number of posts. The number of posts can be increased as the forum grows - perhaps a minimum number of posts that week is better so that once members reach a certain post level they just stop contributing to the site.

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