I have launched my forum recently. Now I would like to discuss with you the most effective forum promotion methods! What advices could you provide on forum policy and rules? What restrictions should I apply for a forum at the first stages? Any other advices and recommendations on how to promote a forum effectively are welcome! Thanks in advance!
Get some content on it before doing anything. If you have to write up guides, Q&A yourself in threads, whatever... getting people to come to an empty forum will not get them to stick. Also, don't go overboard with forum sections. Have the minimum and add as needed. The more empty sections, the more dead it looks. I watched hundreds come and go as I was building a forum myself www.notebookforums.com
How about a link to your forum so people can take a look? It would be of great help to be able to see what you have set up right now.
Don't worry about restrictions as much as the promotion right now. I would recommend using social bookmarking to throw some visitors at your site and hope some stick, it worked out great for my new blog. I would also try to keyword optimize for [your niche here] forums, that is a good search term to have.
I've tried doing a contest, but there is one problem to that. I couldn't get enough members to the forum to participate in the contest in the first place. So there were about 3 people competing for the contest, which didn't help the forum as much as it could. So I suggest you get a very good amount of members on your forum before doing a contest.
one of my friend was getting daily unique more than 200 visits only from DP. i dun't know what he was doing but it's fact that he was getting good no. hits. BTW, the bounce rate was so high. I don't think forum promotion is much more beneficial.
Is is not necessary to have a good amount of members before organising a contest. The success of contest depends upon how you market the contest. If you will spread the word there will be a flood of members joining and posting into your forum. So marketing is always a key to a successful contest.
Its very hard to start a forum but feel free to add your forum here Free Ads it will give you some extra exposure.You could join some other high profile forums and post on those also.Good luck.
Forums should have something unique to offer to get people to stick. Roleplay forums seem to be popular.
Forums are good source to drive targeted visitors to your website. The key to getting quality traffic from forums is to find a forum that is highly targeted to your website, become involved in the community, and create a benefit-laden signature. You can put a link back to your website in your signature. It's critical that you use your signature to offer something of extreme value along with a good call-to-action. Otherwise, why would anybody click?
A regular contest offering niche prizes or cash prizes is always a good way to promote as well as keep the members on your forum.
Ok, my domain has not been indexed by search engines yet and I am filling it with SEO oriented content now, I try to add keywords for each section! So do you think I need to create users and demonstrate hot disussions at the first forum management and promotion stages as well, right? Or may be it is better to allow visitors to do this job for me?
You know, this forum is written in the Russian language and I would like it to be well indexed by Ukrainian Google, so I think there is no scence to post the domain name here! I am just asking general tips and advices on forum promotion strategy!