True, your forum members are the main reasons why your forums remain appealing and updated with relevant content. But did you know that your forum moderators are just as important as the Internet users they are watching over?
Moderators are your forum’s police force. They make sure that everyone follows your forum rules and that’s why they are entitled to ban spammers or filter content. In other words, the support forum moderators give to your online community is a compelling reason why your forum members keep coming back to your site in the first place. Then h0w can you make sure your online community’s moderators are doing their job well? Here are some tips:
1. Talk to them
Your forum moderators are technically working for you. Most of the time, they render time and effort in guarding your online fortress out of passion without any fee. To make them feel appreciated, take time to build relationships with them. Get to know each one of them during your free time and befriend them.
Communicate with them frequently, even if it just involves you asking them what they’re currently up to or what interesting user issues they recently encountered. Take your rapport building efforts further by adding them on social media networks and interacting with them as if you are close friends.
2. Make them participate in more activities
Give your moderators power to make important decisions concerning your forum. Even if it’s just about the mechanics of a forum contest or a new forum feature, allow them to be part of the decision making process to make them feel valued. This will encourage them to devote more time to moderating your site’s content.
If you limit your moderators’ functions to just filtering content, they will feel less needed and will have more reasons to become inactive eventually. With a wider scope of responsibilities, your moderators will have more ways of executing their role as leaders of your community.
3. Do away with daily quotas
Do not be too strict in setting quotas on posts made by your moderators. Instead of requiring them to make frequent forum posts, be more positive by suggesting goals. Weekly or monthly goals are less suffocating than daily post quotas, so it helps them balance or plan things out.
You can make a private forum thread exclusive to all moderators, and you can use it to post weekly or monthly expectations in terms of the number of new topics or posts you want to see. It’s also a good place where moderators can solicit suggestions from one another when starting new forum threads. It’s been said many times, but this holds true when assessing effectiveness: quality over quantity.
4. Reward them
Whether your moderators are rendering services voluntarily or with a price, you need to let them know that you appreciate their dedication in fulfilling their responsibilities. You can offer your moderators rewards that don’t necessarily have to be costly. You can even divide them into groups and incentivize the group that can reach your goals faster.
Some rewards that you can give your moderators include exclusive site access features, discounts (if your site is an e-commerce store), free items, or forum badges. The options are limitless. The point is, your moderators must know that you value their work. Recognition will keep them motivated to do better in protecting your forums from unwanted content.
Making sure your moderators remain active is crucial in making your site fully functional and appealing to visitors. Since the quality of your forum’s content lies in your moderators’ hands, following the measures above can help you secure your site with a pool of dedicated moderators that will help you and your online community.