i was wondering , i just started up a forum and would like to get the word out there, im in the process of buying some uvs , but thats just visitors i want ppl to sign up and stay .. any suggestions
Digg is good and stumble upon for starters. Forums are hard to advertise market and get members for however if it is a unique niche that the forum is in. It should not be too hard. For more tips read www.back-links.org There are some great advertising tips on there. Good luck Will.
well the niche isnt really unique.. its just something that i think would be handy to ppl that have face book or my space bocked at work .. link in my sig
Buy publicity in websites, make publicity in PTC websites... etc... Go to other forums, digg, stamble upon, website comments, blog comments etc and share your site with everyone. Go to chats and rooms to make publicity too. Tell your friends to tell their friends about the website.
Here's probably the biggest peace of advice... Tell me one unique thing about your forum and why I should join. Until you can do that, everything else is useless.
i am a forum owner established for 4 years now, and never decente traffic.. managed to bring 200 members in 4 years... the great part now is that i SEO'ed the forum and now my traffic is growing day by day.. this year i have made more than 400 members and the majority came from google so my advice: Optimize your ofrum for search engines
That's good advice. If it's a general forum, you could have a tough time. Niche forums are more likely. Taking an active part in related forums and having a sig link to yours could help, as these are the same people that like to spend time on forums anyway. Create nice incentives for people to join and take part in your forum. Possibly pay for some good posters and create multiple accounts and hold interesting conversations with yourself (fun...). My brother has had success getting his one forum going because it is a gaming guild. He is/was very active on the specific game forums, so people came to his and are now very loyal. His other forum that was SEO-related died, too much competition, etc.
yeh well, my forum is based around face book and myspace.. its kinda geared toward the people who cant access those sites at work or school but wanna chat with friends. its gonna have an arcade and IM capabilites. its in the process of having the forums on it setup and categorized properly. it also has off topic sections and other stuff.. the link is in my sig check it out and can someone tell me what SEO stands for
You could spend $5 Million for the domain, like the buyers of seo.com did. I just found out it is up now. That's a good way to gain publicity!
You should offer some incentives to make people want to stay like free hosting, free domain name or exchange posting points for cash.
If you have good content and a good community then getting members should not be hard. You not only want members but also return visitors and contributions, so e-mailing them friendly newsletters / reminders may help.