Promoting and Populating a Forum

Okay! I notice so many topics with only a few and sometimes unclear replies to questions like "How to promote a new forum?" or "How to populate a new forum?" and I will start by adding this (feel free to contribute):

Q1) How to promote a new forum/community?

1. Keep adding content daily (new topics)
2. Keep posting daily (reply on topics)
3. Post good questions that will require answers
4. Have you forum link in signatures
5. Use social boomarking sites
6. Ask friends and family to post
7. Add your site to directories
8. Post in forums relevant to yours with quality posts only
9. Yahoo answers (answer questions relevant to your forum only)
10. Keep adding content daily!!! (Important, repeat)
11. Make sure your site is keyword friendly
12. Organise contests
13. Use google adwords
14. Display flyers in places that would find relevant members for your forum
15. Find sponsors to put up prizes and maybe display a link on their site to yours.

Q2) How to populate a new forum/community?

To start a new community and have success, it takes lot of work, really a lot, at this point I assure you that you have no idea yet.

I will recommend to anyone who plans to start a "new forum" to choose a relatively new product niche with not much competition. I believe this is key. Non saturation is key new forums, you need something unique. Let's say that Ford comes out with a new car called the Moveo. There's popular car forums, there's Ford forums, there's forums for other models like the Mondeo, Focus, but there's no or very new forums for the Moveo. I had an established competitor, but one that was a fan, not a marketer - I knew I could kill him in terms of marketing and SEO.

Applying the following and sticking to a hard job you are then just steps away from a successful forum/community:

1. Awesome Design (Unique if possible).
People want a forum that looks cool. With great features. If you're serious go with VB

2. Be active. I had like 50 user accounts - which were all me. Talking to yourself is not fun, but ti's worth it.

3. Get paid posts. This is actually hard to find these days, unlike two years ago when everyone and their mom started a paid posting service.

4. Post Trades. You can get some good deals here at DP (on Buy, Sell or Trade sections) and other forums for trades. I offered things I had (commenting, link building, etc) in exchange for posts. I also used an Forum Forum (Admin Fusion I think) that does post launches every month. Hard to explain, but worth a look.

5. Posted on every single blog talking about this new product. Dont be afraid to sell yourself. I wasn't even looking for SEO, I was looking for posts that were active.

6. Contacted people on eBay and told them their auction of this product were featured on the site. Lots of people then mentioned it on the auction or their own blogs.

7. Build Squidoo / Hub Page lesnes.

8. Built a network of sites to drive traffic to the community. Ex: Cheap Moveo, New Moveo, Moveo Videos. Bad example, but you get the ideas. This was key for me.

9. Did contest. Most posts gets X, most refferals get Y. etc.

10. Spot out admins. These people will stand out and if you make them mods / admins, they'll probably work harder than you to promote the site.

Bottom line is, hustle, but that's how things works in the very beginning.

If you have some other recommendation please bring your contribution, I bet it will be highly appreciated!

 

Great advice. Once tip I might add/re-inforce (you briefly touched on this)... wait to launch a forum until your website has critical mass. Personally, I don't launch a forum until I have at least 500 unique visitors a day, and 5000 subscribers to the sites e-mail list. This way, the forum can immediately take off with a quick announcement and a few pre-created lead-in threads.

Let people know it is going to be a popular forum, and that 5000 people are being told about it right now. Remind them that their username might not be available for long (especially if they have a common name), so register right away. People like to be a part of something right from the start... especially if they think it is going to be really big one day.

 

Good advice, thanks. Not a thing people think of when starting a forum but make sure your server/hosting package can handle the increased traffic.

Also, don't try to copy another forum but be your own forum.

 

One other thing that might work is to come up with a story like this: Worst possible "date" ever...I don't even... that will instigate on commenting the event and you will end-up with some subscribers that will not easily forgot about your forum

 

Thank you for the awesome tutorial.
I tested some of the methods above, and the best was the use of Google AdWords.

Rep+ added.
hyper

 

great advise, i hardly ever run forums but it might be something to look into for the future

 

Real great tips here, I'm still struggling to get my forum off the ground after 8 months!

Also, I think it helps if you have a blog. You can use the VBBridge software to bridge vBulletin and Wordpress, so users can discuss your posts in the forum rather than the comment system.

 

With the new bulletin4 you will have forum and blog in one

 

Contacting and alerting the biggest influencers in your market niche will help. People follow the leaders.

 

This was a great post, lots of good information. It is important to be unique, and to have friends and family post until you get your numbers up. Keep up with current events and hot topics no matter what kind of content you have, everyone loves juicy gossip

 

The thing with forums - people want to start them, people want to make money with them, but the owners do not want to invest the time to make them grow.

My wife wanted a forum, so I est one up for her - and she will not even post in it. Its over a year old, and I bet she has less then 100 post.

If the owner of the forum will not even post in it, why should anyone else?

 

A lot of great tips here...thanks!

If you have a large enough social footprint you can also drive visitors in droves...so long as the content is relevant. And if a thread sparks enough interest you may be looking at some nice re-tweets.

Be sure to insert Social Bookmarking icons and retweet buttons!

Highest Regards,
Sean

 

Good advice a little late for me I thought it would be a good idea to start a forum on my site but after getting it started I read this. Possilbly a bad time to start one (Christmas) and I need more visitors to my site first. Do you think i shuld just leave it up and keep inviting and posting or take it down and reintroduce it later?

 

Forums can be a challenge. You can have an active forum, but sometimes if the admin leaves it can become inactive.

 

Unless he had good moderators helping him

 

You're right!

Setting a forum and building the community can definitely be challenging.I set up Webfireng - Small Business Success Forums out of my passion for the topic area it covered but as things for me now.

I barely have enough time for myself not talk of the one to used in creating posts and other things that will continue to attract members

And so...................the forum is left idle

 

Thank you verymuch, what a great forum! A lot of people sharing very useful tips here

 

you can add your forum to the list of forum web directory........................so all people can use your forum from the list of forums........................

 

Great article. I think that if to focus at list on a half of your advices - the success is guaranteed.

 

Great read.

Thing is forums take more then a year to take off. By that time most people give up. Forums are not something for quitters