What would be the basics of marketing a message board? By reading some other threads, I'm being told that the PR of a message board means nothing.
I would recommend heading over to elance and hiring some people to post on there for maybe a day or two after you launch some sort of promotional techniques, like changing your signature in other forums and making some contests for posters who visit your site. You need to have some people already there and posting so that people think they'll be able to get their questions answered. I would also recommend keeping rather loose rules about signature advertising or special offers at first. If you can get people to think that they'll make easy sales, then they're more apt to remain on board and continue posting. The main thing is to make sure you get some people on the message board. if you have nobody there already, then nobody is going to want to post.
The main thing when it comes to a message board is how active it is. If the board is dead, then no matter how much advertising you do, you will be hitting a wall everytime. Get the forums active and then do the advertising. Nobody wants to join a forum where they are the only one on it.
You need a base of people posting, that always attracts new people. ALso, post about your board places where you may pick up people with common interests
So I guess the main concern would be how to build a startup group of active posters. I gave paid posting a whirl, didn't really work out so well, any other suggestions?
I have developed many message boards in the past with a few of them having over 50,000 members and then I sell them off. I always start off with a message board based around a topic I have a passion for and know a few people who have the same passion that I know will get on the board and post from time to time. Second I usually start it off with a contest of some kind that you must have atleast one post a day to be eligible for. The I usually make about 3-4 fake names besides my own and post on the board taking many news topics in the niche and putting them on there so people have something to talk about since many new posters won't want to have to start the topics. I have developed many large boards and just started a few weeks ago on www.famosomagazine.com/forum and it is growing fast. I may write a small article on it and give real in-depth info because starting message boards has been a fun experience and not very hard for me.
in my opinion, people do not join the empty forums . you must add some valueable information to your users. hiring paid posters may a good solution