For the last two days we talked about the challenges of running a fan forum.  If your board is busy, you’ll have the accompanying problems of a busy board:  arguments between forum members, spammers, trolls, and so-called “Fans” with their own agendas.  Running a fan forum might not be a good use of your promotional time and resources.  And if your board is slow…how much effort are you and your associates willing to put in to try to get a slow-moving forum off the ground?

Fortunately, there are other ways to reach your fans than running your own message board.

That’s why, rather than making your own message board, I’d generally recommend finding one or two message boards that look welcoming and active and have a theme or interest in common with you and your stories.   Note that people will notice, and resist, if the only reason you visit is to talk about your books and exhort people to buy them.  Instead, find a board that interests you, a community you’d want to be part of, and discuss your shared interests:  space opera, urban fantasy, ghost stories, whatever.

Maybe you are already a member of a board like that.  Or maybe you prefer other venues like Twitter or Tumblr.  If you don’t spend much time on the Internet, perhaps you can ask your writer friends what apps or methods they use.   It’s often easier to join a new community when you have a friend who’s already a member who can show you the ropes.

A pre-existing board isn’t going to be all about your novel and your world – and that’s okay.  For a new author, putting out new material at a pace fast enough to sustain an entire message board is not possible.  If you’re writing with a circle of other authors in a shared world, or if your books become blockbusters, or if you have a creative fandom who want to share fan art, fan fic and crafts based on your stories, you might get there…but it’s putting the cart before the horse to make a forum and hope people show up.   If you build a fandom first, the communities will happen organically.  Maybe you won’t get a message board:  maybe you’ll get a tag on Tumblr.

You can certainly join boards for writers — networking with other writers is important — but don’t forget to reach out to people who are readers first and foremost.  I’ve been to cons where I didn’t make any money because all I did was trade books with my fellow writers.  My lesson – to distinguish between networking events with other writers, and events where my goal is to sell books to an expanding base of readers.

We all have enough duties and obligations.  Most fellow members of the message board communities I’ve belonged to go there to socialize, relax, and have fun.  You can network and even advertise a little on message boards, but in the end, people will hang out on a board if they feel it’s fun to do so.

Similarly, have fun in your message board networking, and be mindful how much time you spend on them.  They’re neither really “work” (like writing, editing, or bill paying) nor really “play” (like enjoying your hobbies or spending time with your family) and they should not take away the time you need for both of those.

Happy writing!

Yesterday we talked about the challenges of running a busy message board.  But what if that’s the problem you wished you had?  What if your message board is a stagnant ghost town and you can practically hear the e-crickets chirping?

I’ve also been a member of unsuccessful message boards.  Some of those boards were healthy for a time.  They faded as long-time members lost interest, left, and weren’t replaced.  Others never got off the ground, despite the efforts of the original members.

If a group or message board board moves slowly, people will stop checking it regularly.  They’ll only check it once in a while, or lose interest in checking it at all, if they feel that nobody is ever responding to them, or that there isn’t likely to be any new and interesting content since their last visit.  This is why blogs that update several times a week generally get more traffic than blogs that update monthly, or randomly.  When a board is active, or when a blog update often, readers know there’s usually something new for them to see.

I found that many people balk when they are told from above that “there is a message board for X and we expect you to be active on it.”  It’s hard to make a mandatory work-based message board into a fun and appealing place to socialize.

It’s the same if you set up a board and then feel that you have to make it be active, even if you’re only talking to yourself.  If the board is a chore, it won’t feel like a community in your living room–it’ll be the online equivalent of an awkward meet-and-greet at work, where you put in your time and then go to do something else that’s either rewarding or fun.

If you’ve got your heart set on running a message board, the best thing to do would be to invite a number of people you socialize with anyway – perhaps your local writer’s group, or a board for area writers who write the same sort of fiction you do, or some people you know from conventions.  If you would be chatting and communicating with these people anyway, then setting up a board that can double as a fan-forum for all the members might be a workable option–depending on their interest and preferred method of communication.  You might find that some people prefer Twitter, or Facebook, or e-mail, over message boards.

Fortunately, a message board forum isn’t your only option.

Come back tomorrow for some alternatives to setting up your own message board.