How can I market my forum?

Discussion in 'General Marketing' started by rockinaway, Dec 24, 2007.

  1. #1
    I am struggling to increase the member numbers and visitors to my forum, but I have been submitting to directories, exchanging links and doing an array of stuff to help.

    The link is in my signature, please could someone suggest other strategies..

    Thanks
     
    rockinaway, Dec 24, 2007 IP
  2. gregdavidson

    gregdavidson Well-Known Member

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    #2
    Find other forum administrators and ask them to join your forum in exchange for joining there's. Five active members should tempt other members to join.
     
    gregdavidson, Dec 24, 2007 IP
  3. superrichguy

    superrichguy Well-Known Member

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    #3
    Forums are hard to start.
    The main thing is just content. Keep writing content for it several times a day. Your informative posts I would submit to all the social networking sites like digg and stumble upon and any you can think of.
    Good Luck
    Jason

    If thats a PHPBB site there is a cool mod for social networking....
     
    superrichguy, Dec 24, 2007 IP
  4. rockinaway

    rockinaway Guest

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    #4
    Yeah I have been doing this for some time. I got banned from Digg for it :O .. lol.. But I have been posting regular content and carry my link in my signature etc etc... anything else?
     
    rockinaway, Dec 24, 2007 IP
  5. gregdavidson

    gregdavidson Well-Known Member

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    #5
    Also, give away a free ebook or other download like I do on my forum. A lot of people may join your forum simply for the download but you can send out a mass email once your forum gets busier. BTW how did you setup your forum like that? I'm using the same template except I kept the default setup.
     
    gregdavidson, Dec 24, 2007 IP
  6. rockinaway

    rockinaway Guest

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    #6
    I am quite good with SMF, been using it for 2 years now :), so I have customised several mods and made tweaks to suit me. The theme is a mix of SoftMC_Blue by m3talc0re and the ApolloBB theme, it is a very nice theme in my opinion :)
     
    rockinaway, Dec 24, 2007 IP
  7. superrichguy

    superrichguy Well-Known Member

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    #7
    Also when posting on other forums, reference your site, like if someone asks about Seo Tools, tell them a few cool Seo tools and say I have a complete list here : http://www.adminfuel.com/215_cool_seo_tools-t774.0.html

    Stuff like that always helps....
    But from what I see you need to post a lot more your not even at 1 post per day....... Since its your forum you should be well above that.....Even the owner digitalpoint has 14 posts on average today.......thats with close to 20,000 posts since 2004....lots of posts made every day.....
    Up yours (posts that it...didnt sound good the first way i wrote it) and you will be fine...takes time
     
    superrichguy, Dec 24, 2007 IP
  8. rockinaway

    rockinaway Guest

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    #8
    Ok.. content is going up :D.. just it is slightly hard as you end up talking to yourself..
     
    rockinaway, Dec 24, 2007 IP
  9. superrichguy

    superrichguy Well-Known Member

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    #9
    Yea I know...haha but talking to yourself is ok. People will post once they get interested...Without posts people will leave quickly since there is nothing to search. Each time someone does post, reply to it. Say thank or great post or whatever...make it active....Go back to Dp's first posts, just a bunch of friends posting to each other...helping one another out.....then it just explodes on ya....
     
    superrichguy, Dec 24, 2007 IP
  10. rockinaway

    rockinaway Guest

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    #10
    Yeah.. when people do post, I tend to ask a question back to keep them involved...
     
    rockinaway, Dec 24, 2007 IP
  11. superrichguy

    superrichguy Well-Known Member

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    #11
    Thats where you got to start....Forums take time....
    Now get off DP and spend more time on your site. The SE's will crawl your content and people searching will find it....eventually...
    Good Luck. Hope I helped a little....

    Oh and dont forget to get your friends involved in posting and replying.
     
    superrichguy, Dec 24, 2007 IP
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  12. rockinaway

    rockinaway Guest

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    #12
    Yeah, the problem is my friends are not interested in this stuff, but very helpful, thanks ;)

    Say.. I could class you as a friend now :p How about you helping me? (moderator positions up for grabs)
     
    rockinaway, Dec 24, 2007 IP
  13. superrichguy

    superrichguy Well-Known Member

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    #13
    Well if your friends arent interested then talk to yourself...haha. make fake accounts and reply back to them. In your fake account make a posting asking how to do such and such. and then you the big bad admin (you)goes to the rescue and answers the question...
    You will feel like its just a waste, but people like to see active forums. Would you stay at a forum that only gets one post per day?? I know I wouldnt.

    As for me, haha I have wayyy too many things at once, my wife keeps getting mad at me for starting new projects while im working on others (i just get ideas and dont wanna forget them thats why i start them).
    They have forum posters here that you can pay for like a dime for 10 posts or something fairly cheap. Get some of them to post quality stuff...

    Also find stuff in technoroti(sp) and make a post about that, and comment thier articles. Should bring in more traffic...
     
    superrichguy, Dec 24, 2007 IP
  14. dnk

    dnk Well-Known Member

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    #14
    Start a contest
     
    dnk, Dec 24, 2007 IP
  15. cool_78

    cool_78 Guest

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    #15
    Hire forum posters to increase your content and to make your forum look busy.
     
    cool_78, Dec 24, 2007 IP
    buffalo likes this.