Scheduled Chats

I've seen this work on other forums before, but for some reason, it never worked on mine. If you successfully run scheduled chats at regular intervals, what, if anything, is the trick? How do you find a good time suitable for all? How do you get people to be interested and actually show up for the chat?

 

Scheduled chats were pretty good for us at WDBoards.com and I promoted it by sending out a newsletter/email to my members about the upcoming chat. I also used a 'news' sharing piece that rotates the upcoming chats as well as starting threads about it.

The folks that participate (generally about 10-20% of the 'active' members) have a ball and we have a fun time interacting with each other!

 

Could you explain what you mean with 'news sharing piece'?

 

LOL....I can see that I didn't explain that properly.

It's the top of my site Walt Disney Forums next to the login piece. It's a rotating newsticker mod that I'm using from here: UKBL ~ Newsticker IFrame in Navbar - vBulletin.org Forum

 

Ah. I see now. Yes, I use something similar.

 

My members chat on Thursday nights; everyone has gigs or plans on Fridays and the weekends, so those aren't good days. I have the suggested chat time mentioned in the welcome email and also as a dynamic announcement on forumhome. "Tonight is chat night, newbies are expected to bring snacks for everybody" runs all day Thursday while "It's time for chat!" along with a link to the chat room runs during chat hours.

 

at the end of october i did a halloween competition and party, where i added a chat room for the weekend. it was so active and members enjoyed it so much that i decided that i should have a chat every friday night, and so far it has been very active, with up to 12 members online at one time.

i got members interested by having that first chat on the halloween party, and then most of the members there asked for regular chats because they enjoyed it so much.