Hi, I'm helping a friend with a new forum he's created and I was wondering what were the best ways to promote the forum? Is it similar to promoting any other kind of website or are there different techniques for promoting forums on the internet? Also, the forum has a few members and I'm also wondering what would be the best way to encourage the members to post more. thanks
Without a doubt promoting a forum is one of the hardest things to do. 5-10 years ago it was a piece of cake, today people are over-socialized and joining another forum is just too taxing. I hardly ever post on any other forum outside of DP except when I have a specific question (usually a technical one) that nobody here can answer. You never mentioned what the forum is about. In my unprofessional view forums appealing to a specific group of people have a chance of taking off as opposed to forums that are about this and that. Has you friend tried http://www.backpage.com/ ? Posting in the community / general and services /creative & misc. sections may yield some results.
Thanks for the advice. The forum is for discussing personal development as well as other non-IM topics and it's also for buying and selling personal development and non-IM products. I'm not sure if my friend has tried backpage.com, so I'll ask him. Any ideas on how he can get the current members to participate more? The forum is very new, by the way.
I'm also helping a friend promote his new forum and what we're doing is using guest blogging and so far it working very well. For members to engage, you guys need to give them freebies and run a lot of contests. Make sure that the contests encourage them to invite other people to join the forum. For instants the one who gets many social activity or most votes will win. Try advertising on ProBlogger Job Board as well it gets a lot of eyeballs. Hope that helps. I know it's not easy growing a forum
Well does your friend have a budget? If so, send a message. But yeah, guest-blogging is a good way. But another good thing is to encourage the members to share your forum on the social networks. One good way is to pop-up lock a freebie so they have to like/share something on facebook/twitter. Also, setting up a page for the forum on facebook would be needed for that, but you can then use the facebook page to announce contests and such to get even more people to participate.
There are really no special ways to promote a forum. You can use the very same strategies that are used in promoting products and websites on the internet today. If it's personal development, I'm pretty sure many would have interest on that. Make sure that you have a moderator/s who is/are to respond to posters. Also, you can hire forum posters while your forum takes off. If your friend has a budget for that. It doesn't really have to be expensive.