[English-coach]

Hi everyone,

I'd like to brainstorm ways that we could increase participation in this forum. I visit daily hoping to answer a question or help others but I usually find that either:

1) There aren't new questions to answer
2) That someone has already provided an answer

How can we get people participating more in this forum? Actually, Eric...what sort of traffic are we dealing with here? I'm sure you get alot but it would be interesting to know how many people visit the site versus how many people post on the site.

Any ideas on how to boost participation? I think incentives would work, but what? I mean the free advertising incentive 100% works for webmasters and teachers, but what about the learners. What can help motivate them to post more?

[Eric]

You raise some interesting points and great questions. I would love to see more posting.

Yes, eslHQ does have a lot of traffic but I think the majority of users are material seekers and not question askers.

Getting ESL students to post is a whole other problem that I haven't been able to solve.

So any thoughts or ideas will definitely be taken into consideration.

Thanks for posting, EC!

Eric

[Eric]

Also, don't forget to take advantage of the "View new posts" link in the upper right hand corner of every page, right next to your name. It's very useful.

[English-coach]

Thanks Eric!! I hadn't noticed that before. That is great!

[Eric18]

We could also add bookmarking features so guests can easily add us to Stumble Upon, Digg, Facebook, etc.

Just a thought.

[Eric]

you can already add posts/threads to digg, delicious and furl using the icons below your posts. im not sure how much those get used, though...

[Eric18]

Good point. I didn't see the Digg logo and don't use the other ones.

I'd still try it. Last week somebody used Stumble Upon for my site, and I sold books to 8 different customers that day. Perhaps the events were unrelated, but it impressed me.

[mesmark]

Quote English-coach

I visit daily hoping to answer a question or help others but I usually find that either:

1) There aren't new questions to answer
2) That someone has already provided an answer

How can we get people participating more in this forum?

Not really an answer to your problem via eslHQ posts, but something you could do is frequent various forums.

You may read something somewhere or be involved in a conversation at another forum and then pop over here and ask what people think about that idea, for example.

[English-coach]

Hey Mark, great idea! I will try that out. Thanks for the idea.