Ok, so currently I have a car blog covering various car industry news and odd stuff that gets about 100-1000 hits per day. The site is on the main domain (of course) and the forum is located at http://forums.site.com ... so the forum is technically not in the center of everything. However I want to work on building a community as well as just having news. Right now I have a link to in the navbar, plus I always try to mention the forums in every post I write. The posts usually drive some traffic to the forums, but there is no real incentive to join since there are very few discussions. I've even gone ahead and made one fake account which I also post with to make it seem like something is going on (along with one of my friends who posts from time to time). SO any ideas on how I can drive people from just reading the home page to actually register and post. I even added the Facebook one-click login option. Should I just continue with posting content and hope for the best? Also installed vbseo in hopes it will help with rankings later on.
What niche are you in ? Do you target a specific sector or a specific region ? There are many ways to promote a auto forum , to many to mention them all . But apply them in the wrong way and your business will implode . EDIT : Found your website and forum . Had a look at it . The problem is that your forum has far far far to many subforums . How do you expect to build a community if you're just treating everyone like a file in a folder ? Restructure your forum and then think of marketing .
What suggestions do you recommend for dealing with the auto brands? I know that's the big issue so far. I just wanted to lay it out from the start because on an old forum I marketed... it started of with lots of divisions, but then we compressed it, only to find out we had to split it up again. Maybe if I divide them into region rather than brand?
Hmm tricky question . I only know two websites that deal whit all the brands . One formed it's forum when it had about 10k UV /day , it offered prizes for the number of posts , so the forums became populated in about 4 months . The other website had a sale section where users could sell/buy stuff from other users and from brands 2 . When the forums where added the website employed a special mod (yours truly) that had the duty of creating hate threads : muscle VS rice ford VS GMC nascar vs WRC and managing the community and making it grow . That also made users flock to the forums and bash each other . It took very very intense moderating because insults and threats where in truckloads . The current owners never managed to civilize the boards and many of the users are still dumbf*ks . So the community isn't a stable one . You're biting to much to chew whit your super sized forum . My suggestion you rethink the forums based on your visitors . That's something you must decide yourself how to do . I've already said enough . Good luck ..... competitor .
Yea the versus threads never seem to go away anywhere. Ill have a go at downsizing a bit and see how it goes. I guess eventually when things get too big... they get out of hand sometimes (e.g. Digital Point). Kinda the inevitable unless your mods work around the clock to maintain order.
That's why I keep some spare mods . In case the main guys get sick I'll always have moderation available . No mods = No profit .
Very true. Also I rather grow slow, than try to start a firefight with Versus threads... just to keep the environment sane.
I have a board which I grew by posting under many fake accounts (with the help of friends also). After some time other real people also joined the board. However this method haven't worked on my second board, because there is an other pretty big forum what is about the same topic.
ive been doing some reading and it seems that a few good ideas are posting under fake accounts, posting on other forums (good contributions) with a link in your sig is also beneficial, and getting people to start it off. Paid content creation seems to be a horrible idea as Ive read.
I think posting on other car boards with a link to your own car board can get you banned.. (but of course it depends on the forum rules where you are posting)
Yes I meant in the sig of course. The board owners usually don't like if you advertise another board with the same subject. Just imagine putting a link to an other webmaster board here in your sig
Posting under fake names doesn't really work in our domain . Car owners have some brains in their skulls . SEO is worth tons more then posting under fake names . Car owners usually find you not the other way around . If you're willing to do the fake posting for 6 months whit 50 accounts then it might work . It will leave you brain dead (having 50 personalities is fun ) but it might work .
You can use sigs when you post on other car forum. Try to build backlink and write article to improve page rank and visitors.
I still don't see the point how will SEO work if there are no posts on your board. Nobody will simply join a dead board, there is no point to do so.