Starting from the beginning

Discussion in 'General Marketing' started by rboesen1, Mar 17, 2012.

  1. #1
    Hello,

    We have a new forum site and are trying to figure out the best approach to gaining some visitors. Is there a few recommendations you guys might give?

    Thx
     
    rboesen1, Mar 17, 2012 IP
  2. rith

    rith Member

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    #2
    Hello guy, forum is the best place to share experience and learn from each other. Please raise your problem here and ask for other people to help you.
     
    rith, Mar 17, 2012 IP
  3. Kanonig

    Kanonig Well-Known Member

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    #3
    Here is one great advice for you.

    1. Find a handful list of tops sites related to your area of specialization and see if they allow ads. Place advert with them for a month and track where your traffic comes most from and repeat the process. It is important to have a good banner/content ads solving your target market needs.

    2. You can get in touch with sites related to your area of specialization that do not have forums and see if you can create a sub domain for them on your forum. This way they will be referring visitors to your site at no cost to you.

    3. There to include some kind of incentive, however, do not run this from your advertising budget but rather from the profit you make from your forum.
     
    Kanonig, Mar 17, 2012 IP
  4. cameronpalte

    cameronpalte Active Member

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    #4
    Well, to start, I am actually kind of interested in looking at your forum site, so could you please post us a link?

    However, if you are interested in building up followers, here are a few tips to help you (use all others that people will reply with and because of the skill of many digital point members you can get tons of quality information:)).

    1) Quality Content. You want your forum to have content, and people to be encouraged to sign up from all the information they see.
    2) Design. You will want your forum to have a nice intuitive design that drags in the viewer and interests them.
    3) Signatures. These days many people join forums who have signature functions. Make sure your viewers have easy access to when it will be available, or instant access.
    4) Easy to Find. You will want more threads/subthreads than less. People like to have an exact spot for their topic. Make places easy to find (digital point buyselltrade section), but also make sure to have a general talk page or main discussion page where people can talk but doesn't necessarily fall into another forum..


    That is all for now, hope you enjoy!
     
    cameronpalte, Mar 17, 2012 IP
  5. rboesen1

    rboesen1 Peon

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    #5
    Thanks for the info guys! I have a link below :)

    Cheers
     
    rboesen1, Mar 17, 2012 IP
  6. Preneur

    Preneur Greenhorn

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    #6
    I believe you have too many sections. Having too many empty sections in the beginning makes the forum look very inactive. Inactivity is a turn-off to members.

    Also, consider hiring some paid posters to put some content in your forum.
     
    Preneur, Mar 17, 2012 IP
  7. cameronpalte

    cameronpalte Active Member

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    #7
    Great, I already replied but now that I can view it I can try to include more;).

    First, great design. You have a lot of forums and are very specific which can help your viewer base grow rapidly. The only thing I really want to add that you should take note of is your religion forum which I highly, highly recommend removing. Some people have beliefs that aren't very strong, some have extremely strong beliefs, and some have no beliefs. The point is that whether you think this or that, someone's bound to disagree and while that forum can help you some it can really result in large trouble and large arguments and may even go far enough to scare some members away.

    (DP has a religious section, and boy I have seen things get seriously ugly in their, though they are doing a nice job working on handling it:)).

    My point, is delete it now before the troubles start.
     
    cameronpalte, Mar 17, 2012 IP
  8. rboesen1

    rboesen1 Peon

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    #8
    That's prob a good point. Besides I don't think there is one post in any I the religion sections. I will remove for now.
     
    rboesen1, Mar 17, 2012 IP
  9. rboesen1

    rboesen1 Peon

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    #9
    Thanks for the feedback so far btw :)
     
    rboesen1, Mar 17, 2012 IP
  10. rboesen1

    rboesen1 Peon

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    #10
    Also, I really want to add our dedicated iPhone app. My question is, "does it make sense to invest our resources at this point"? I love the thought of having it but don't want to waste $ if the site is a flop.
     
    rboesen1, Mar 17, 2012 IP
  11. cameronpalte

    cameronpalte Active Member

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    #11
    First don't think of the site as being a flop, that is the wrong mindset. Think of it as being successful, and make that your main goal. Second to answer your question directly, no this does not make sense at this point. Many popular forums go all the way without having a dedicated apple app (consider apple + android also), but I do not agree with this.

    I recommend waiting till you have 50k views/month with the site, because I would then recommend signing up for buysellads where you can make lots of money selling ads at flat fees. Once you do this wait till you are making an ok amount of money ($10+/day) and have a solid viewers base and then invest in both an apple and an android app.

    That is just my opinion, hope you enjoyed, questions, post:)

    Just a note of warning, digital point may give you infractions for posts like these, so be careful:)
     
    cameronpalte, Mar 17, 2012 IP
  12. Sharkfist

    Sharkfist Greenhorn

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    #12
    Design looks good, but like someone else said the lack of content since it's a fresh forum can be a turn off for new users. Maybe take some of them out for now, or try to get family/friends/paid people to post in it to help bring the content in line where you need it.
     
    Sharkfist, Mar 17, 2012 IP
  13. cameronpalte

    cameronpalte Active Member

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    #13
    So I have joined your site, and been using it for a while now to see how it is. I like your signature function, easy to implement. It is designed very similarly to digitalpoint, which I like because I love digitalpoint. The only things I don't like is it would be nice if you had a members page, where you could see the member for example and posts they made ect.

    The other thing, that I really don't like is you don't have information easily available about number of posts, threads started, posts/day ect. It would be really nice if you include that somewhere.
     
    cameronpalte, Mar 17, 2012 IP
  14. rboesen1

    rboesen1 Peon

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    #14
    Thank you very much!
     
    rboesen1, Mar 20, 2012 IP
  15. 3drapidprototyping

    3drapidprototyping Peon

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    #15
    Hello Friend,

    Forum is the greatest situate to share knowledge and study from each extra. Please increase your difficulty here and ask for other people to help you.
     
    3drapidprototyping, Mar 21, 2012 IP
  16. josefaryan

    josefaryan Member

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    #16
    Yes, i have one suggestion/idea with which i have some experiece. I.e. Linkreferral. Just start a campaign over there and you will recieve 10-20 visitors per day along with reviews on your website by the users like you and me. All you have to do is register, complete the assigned tasks everday (usually it takes 15-20 mins to complete them).
     
    josefaryan, Mar 21, 2012 IP
  17. MC6

    MC6 Peon

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    #17
    More general advice: listen to everyone, but know when to ignore them.
     
    MC6, Mar 22, 2012 IP
  18. greenmile

    greenmile Peon

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    #18
    Paid posters can definitely get the ball rolling and make your forum seem active. Many people don't like joining forums that don't have much activity, empty sections, etc. As for the app, I agree with holding off on it. They're not essential to a forum to begin with (I don't think any of the ones I'm a member of have one) and you'll want to see if that's something that your membership base will even be interested in once the time comes to reevaluate it.
     
    greenmile, Mar 23, 2012 IP
  19. chinasa

    chinasa Peon

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    #19
    One advice don't let your forum be spam infected.
     
    chinasa, Mar 24, 2012 IP
  20. WriterMom

    WriterMom Greenhorn

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    #20
    My advice is to make sure you have a clean cut layout. I tend to frequent forums that are more sophisticated looking. There are some good quality forums that are simply all over the place which, unfortunately, does not sit well with most of us visitors because it is confusing to travel from one section of the forum to another since everything is all mixed up. Make sure that you keep your forum organized. Market yourself and your forum so that you can get more traffic and visitors.
     
    WriterMom, Mar 24, 2012 IP