Re-starting an existing community

[Trey1975us]

Hi, I will soon purchase a soccer forum that has been deserted since 2006. Since I will essentially be starting from scratch in terms of trying to build my community up, what do you think I should focus on first. Here are some of my initial thoughts:

The amount of forums
Currently, the site has like 20 forums on it... each of them with a minimal amount of posts. I've seen advice on this forum to compress the amount of forums at the start and then build on top of it from there. With that, i was think that since this is a soccer site, and since the world cup is coming up this summer, maybe i should focus my energies on the world cup, and then once I get that going, branch out to forums talking about the different leagues and national teams around the world. The downside could be that people only view me as a World Cup forum, and then desert me after the tournament is over. I suppose it all depends on how I communicate the direction of the forum. Anyways, thoughts?

Driving content on the site
I've seen it said on this site that content drives traffic and monetization. Using that logic, I was thinking to help jumpstart conversations and interest on my site, I should have a blog and also an auto-feed related articles pertaining to my topic of interest (for example, if the site has a world cup focus, maybe I can have blogs and articles focusing on key teams or key players to watch out for). That brings me to my next point

Writer for the content
How would i go about identifying someone who could write a daily (or regular) soccer blog for me. Honestly, i don't have the knowledge nor passion to write a blog, but would love to have a someone do one for my site (of course at minimal costs ) Anyone have experience with hiring a blogger for their site? Should I consider offshore to keep the costs down? Or is it best to find a blogger that I already like online, and then link into their site (my only problem with is that I want the blog to look like it's being written for my site)

There are so many other questions that I have but it's probably best to stop there for now. Any advice you can provide is greatly appreciated.

Percy

P.S. Once i purchase the site, I will post the link

[Patrick]

Hey Percy,

The World Cup dilemma you mention is a good thought. I think I'd maintain the general soccer focus, if that is where you want to be. But, you could always have a temporary forum for the World Cup, too.

Auto-feeding blogs can help. How much depends on the site, etc. But, I would keep the focus on the discussions, even if that means asking friends who like soccer to come in and post.

As far as hiring a blogger, you could try the ProBlogger job board: http://jobs.problogger.net. I'd definitely focus on someone who loves soccer.

I hope that this helps.

Thanks,

Patrick
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