I've started a new forum on my website, but I'm struggling to get new members to sign up. What is the best way to attract new members to my site and have them participate in my forum. I seem to get visitors but sign ups are rare. Any advise?
is the link on you sig. the forum? maybe you can get lots of paid postings and hopefully it will get the ball rolling.
I agree with the others. You need content. Just publish lots of interesting posts (or pay someone to do it for you) and wait. Personally I would also start promoting a forum project after having some good and relevant content. If visitors to your forum see that there are no posts (or just very few posts) they will be discouraged to sign in and start new threads.
That will actually not do a whole lot, as I assume most people looking into home heating are in fact not webmasters... though I reckon it could help a little.
try advertising, offering incentives for word-of-mouth referalls or competitions? The phrase popularity you cant buy need not apply to forums
Paid posting is good to start the ball rolling but won't sustain the forum activities. Content is the key like everyone said.
bad tho that matters.. if u have a high enough investment you can keep getting paid posters for a while.. i know many forums that do have that. You can always try rss feeds -_- or post on other forums and then once u have a high enough rep, advertise your forum inside your signature ;D
the same trouble i write articles now but a have a many other routine work what is primary? i don't want to employ paid posters i have a members but they have a no questions, they contact in messenger
Its just like any other site. Add lots of content and combine it with good on page seo. Make sure every thread has good SEO.
A great way to attract people to a forum is to run a contest on it. For instance, we provide free Web hosting. So, to attract people to our site and our forum, every now and then we'll run a contest in which we give away domain names (you.com) for free. These contests draw a lot of people, and they actually are giving out something useful. So, do this with your site - I think it will work great.
Can anyone recommended a good paid posting company? This sounds like a good idea to get the ball moving in the right direction.
Maybe you can consider to implement some offers or contest. Anyway, the content is still the most important element.
Definitely provide some great content. But as for the getting members side of things, start up some competitions and prizes for people with the highest post count, and referral count. Things like that will probably get more people on to your forum. Forums are one of the hardest things to keep people interested in. If you don't have a good community and frequent posters your forum will fail in no time. -- hamish
i've had trouble getting people on my forum. this topic inspired me to come up with an idea... i have hooked my forum up directly to my products, giving extra information on an item and allowing users to add their own comments. for an example, see here: http://www.space-clothing.co.uk/products/details/tshirts/88 only just added this functionality today so i havent promoted it yet.
Yes that is the address to my site. I'm thinking about paid posting, but there are so many companies that claim to do it the best. Has anyone tried a paid posting service?
Most paid posters are doing it for the money so do not have the passion needed to give anything of quality, and rarely if ever offer even content worthy of the nickels and dimes it'll cost to pay them per post. Start a second account, as a few dumb questions, leave them for a day, answer them in detail with your admin account. Just be sure you are doing the same when real people ask dumb questions... Build your own content... and if you have a brick & mortal shop, encourage your employees to post in the forums, lol.