Any suggestions on how to drive people to a new forum site? The site is listed in my signature. It is the Huntsville-Alabama site. I am developing a new website for Alabama.
Guess put it out in social networking sites, give it to your contacts and ask them to promote it. The best method is word-of-mouth.
Try running a referal contest and give away good prize's or advertising spots on your new forum. You need to get the word out about your forum in your town and find a way to get them to recomend it to other people. What's so important about your forum? Give the people in your town a reason to come to your forum. Before you can even think about promoting your forum you need to create some categories and some boards. Also get rid of the default theme. Get the forum setup and looking nice then work on traffic. DP forum even has a website review section to get other members to review your forum.
since this website is for a specific area you need to advertise locally and in the physical world. put some flyers up in grocery stores and on telephone poles. get some ads in a few Alabama newspapers. search the web for sites that are already geared towards Alabama residents and post on their forums and blogs (but don't spam). i live in an area that's known for tourism, and every grocery store you go to, there are always brochures and advertising the local attractions and resorts. I suggest creating a simple brochure, which can easily be done with Open Office, and passing them out. By the way, your site could use a bit more of a professional feel, plus some of your images are broken.
To drive traffic to the new forum we must maintain good and quality content on the forum. Also try to participate in the social networking sites to attract visitors. And then just do the forum posting to get more traffic for the forum.
You must keep valuable fresh content on your forums for the registered members, you can ask them to spread information about the forum it self
You have got 2 effective ways. 1. Make contents there and let Google Bring you members. I know its little tough.. but that would sure make you awsome 2. Have a Domain youown which has good visits. and then make a forum as a subdomain and integrate them. Done Thanks Dont forget about Spamming too. Try it but you will have the risk. You will be banned from every where if you spam he he heh
Just visited your site, it looks clean. But it seem to be too little activities there... Nothing much to attract new visitors to register.
At the beginning of your forum, you'd better take some measures to encourage your users to keep active. For example, you can provide some free ad spaces on your forum. Of course, those common online marketing strategies are all important and useful to promote your forum. You can try social media marketing, blog commenting, etc.
You could advertise in the local Thrifty Nickel. This will set you back 30-40 a month , but it could be worth the it. Have you done your keyword research?
I would really focus on a facebook fan page and add all of your friends in the local area. or start a new facebook profile and start promoting the site by adding as many locals to your friend's list. Also establishing a twitter account and other relevant social networking accounts to begin to build as many fans as possible. But there has to be something of quality that will keep the fans or members once they get there, maybe you could start by actually trying to populate some content yourself to make it appear its a thriving place. Most people by default like to be apart of things that are popular and already have a presence.
Firs, your website should have an enticing look, it should have a great and quality contents, it should also be optimized and let's face it, if you're forum is a do follow forum, definitely, link builders will lounge in your website every now and then.
Its hard in the begining... One thing I did was offer free ad space in exchange for good content & promotion. The thing that is a little different for me was it was a little easier for my sponsors to post good content because most are pictures. thefabforums.com
I know this may sound like too much work BUT it does work. Make flyers that inform people how awesome your new forum is and a description. Have your website address on pull tabs at the bottom. Put these flyers in all the grocery stores and any bulletin board available. You could even contact some local businesses to see if they would like to advertise with a discount on your site in return for keeping your flyer up.