Hey guys, Just wondering if you can give me some pointers on how I can kick my brand new forum into gear? I've heard of services where you can pay for posts, but I'd rather have real interested people finding the forum and contributing to the discussion. Thanks for your help!
Send e-mails to posters, asking them for their opinions on the subjects talked about in your board. Tell them that you are looking for more opinions, and that you have read their past posts and would value theirs. Ok, ok, so you're lying. ~ Don't make them have to sign up. Allow them to post right away. But, first, ask others what they think of your board, what they think of your subject matter.
Advertise everywhere. Stumble it, ask others to stumble it, Digg It, post it in your signature in other forums, etc.
Thanks for your help Perry. Good advice! In regards to not enforcing sign-ups, will this have a negative effect on user retention. I'm just thinking that it's the notification emails that make me return to a forum to reply to a post..
Absolutely. I'm sorry, I meant don't have it in the beginning. Let them get use to the board, let them slip into a habit of posting there, and then enforce it.
I did see that post. Some very interesting comments! My forum is targeted at an older demographic though, it's an Australian travel forum..
So, talk about how bad air travel is. ... How it sucks. Everybody can relate to that, right? Take out pen and paper and write down all the subjects you can talk about. Stupid or not, just start writing them down.
Oh man this gets me. Everyone says Digg your forum. Whats there to Digg? Digg users hate seeing just a site being on Digg. If you are gonna go anywhere with Digg and your forum make proper articles, not conversations And what miakiru said that is nowhere near what you should be doing to promote your forum. Properly promote your forum go round MySpace, FaceBook and all those social networks and you can easily target the group you need and I hate to say it but kind of spam it. Whenever I had my forum, I made 50 fake accounts and then I made the "currently online" not shown so people wouldn't see how unactive my forum was. PM me if you want to have more help.
How about starting a blog about Australian travel? Get on a few blog directories and then make sure you advertise the link to your forum?
You could hire a few forum posters to get the ball rolling, then after there is enough content you can stop with the paid posting and look for regular members.
You could get some software from bodeezy.com and use it to promote your forum. I have been using this software for a week now and it has done nothing but boost my traffic. They will cut you massive deals, and please tell them that i sent you. Thanks Also you could have contest, and give away stuff. Make people contribute and reward them if they do. I will join.
I have started and ran many successful forums and message boards. I have found the main thing is to have targeted people coming to your forum, in the past I have tried paying people to come and post and what I got was a big bill at the end of the month and then those posters were long gone after their posts were done and they rarely returned. You need to become affiliates and gain links with websites targeted towards what your forum is about and post on other forums similar to yours and add you link in the signature. Another thing you can do is make many names and post under them to make the board look active which saves a lot of money instead of having other people posting. Contests are another big thing and the prize doesn't have to be huge but it needs to be enough for people to spend time to register and make sure the people get their prize at the end because it is not only good business ethic but also will make word of mouth about your site positive and bring even more people. Main thing, it takes a lot of work to get started and maintain but at the same time can be a very powerful tool is cross promoting other websites and can get you some major advertising bucks.
Dont purchase forum posting/boosting services. I created a blog post which you should read here as to why not: http://www.profitbaron.com/2007/11/28/is-paid-forum-posting-really-worth-it/ What you should do is post exchange with other forum owners and at the same time, digg it (ask friends too as well), stumble it, promote in directories etc
H-Bomb, I'm not sure what type of forum you have, but I would advertise your forum in your signatures while posting at other forums. Try some of the larger forums like ConquerYourNiche, Ewealth, Warrior, etc. Word of mouth travels quickly on the internet, so advertise it at every opportunity. Best of Luck!
Thanks so much for the overwhelming response guys. I will be taking everything you've mentioned so far on board! All your ideas a greatly appreciated. In regards to placing advertising on the forum, do you guys (as forum users) get annoyed at image banners? Would you prefer to see relevant (and more subtle) text ads? Also, how much advertising is too much? I currently have a horizontal line of text ads just under the header and a vertical line down the right hand side.
You create some accounts and make up bullsh!t threads/posts so when you DO get traffic, people don't run off. Make 50-60 fake threads with you talking amongst yourself with different accounts. Sounds stupid, but thats the method I used 1.5 years ago and I ended up having a forum that got 2K uniques/day. No point in promoting if the forum seems dead. Don't add AdSense just yet to the board also. Keep it clean, give it a good design, and make it look active even if it's not.