Dog Forums

I love being on forums, mostly I contribute to subjects that I know well and feel comfortable with…mainly dog training and behavior. I’ve joined many dog forums since I first started navigating the internet, because of time restrictions I’ve only stuck with a few though. I even made my own dog forum, simply because I wanted to see what it takes to build an online community. Let me tell you it’s been hard albeit really fun. As far as my forum goes I’ve got a few members that contribute regularly, a great group of people! It takes a lot of work on our part to keep the forum looking active.

I honestly think that forums are a great source of information for those looking to become ‘experts’ in a certain subject. Not only do you read info from all sides of the argument, but you meet people that know lots more than you in certain areas, you find links to useful places, and the discussion atmosphere really gets your mind going not only digesting information you would usually do in a regular article website. But honestly it can be a tad hard to integrate yourself into a forum…

I found that your first 200-500 posts will usually shape what people think of you. Depending on the activity of that forum even getting to 200 posts can be a challenge! Not only that but most usually ignore you as the “newbie”, and don’t really pay much attention to you until you start quoting others or being the devil’s advocate. Regardless once you break the ice it’s pretty easy sailing from then on and then the real learning begins.

I’ve met several people on forums that come in as newbies that know very little about dogs and after a few couple months they are very knowledgeable dog owners! It really is amazing. I don’t know if it is all the information that they read or maybe the pressure of being correct (or at least being able to effectively defend one’s opinion) but it really happens.

Anyway, with that I highly encourage anyone reading this to sign up for a forum if they haven’t already. It takes time and dedication but it can be really rewarding. Although which forum you join is completely up to you, I’ve found that forums with lots of members tend to be more ‘clique-ish’ and those are usually the harder ones to get noticed and fit in, but these tends to have much more information to offer. Smaller forums are easier to follow along and get to know the people better. These usually won’t have too many heated discussions but you’ll find good advice there. I have noticed that smaller forums also give better welcomes…probably because they don’t often get members, who knows; but don’t be surprised if you join up to a big forum and you only get 1-3 responses…it happens.

Well this has been my experience with dog forums at least; maybe the experience is different for forums in different niches? I’d definitely like to know, so feel free to comment here or talk about at K9Academy!

Till next time,