Have you ever thought to yourself how new forums succeed and you have don't have any idea why? Well, we'll try to cover how a community succeeds. As, the owner - you must be able to dedicated some time your community for quite some time. Think to yourself. What is your community? What is your general target? Is your forum the only one in existance in your niche? If it is, then you're in luck - be the first to become #1 and set the goals for any competitors. As the owner, you should try to post at least 10 - 50 new threads a week, and post as much as possible until your community takes a life of its own. Do you have any friends? Tell them to post as often as possible. Remember, guys small forums can become larger ones in a short period of time if the work is put in. Post exchanges: Have you tried to do any post exchanges with other forum owners? This could help your new community in the short run, but you should have members posting as well to make this work for you. If you're looking for an automated post exchange program, then we recommend postfusion by Adminfusion. Remember guys, do quality post exchanges. Don't aim for quantity - you want quality content that users will want to reply to. Paid posting: Why should you do paid posting when your friends can post for you? Paid posts are worthless and usually don't help your community at all - so don't even bother. Save your money and try to promote your community via google adwords or something similar. Communities for forum owners: Do you want to discuss your forum, ideas, and other important aspects of your new community with other forums? Well, the following forums are dedicated to forum owners: Admin fusion The admin zone **Feel free to add to this list. Promotion of your community: Are you a member of many online communities? Do you post helpful articles for users to enjoy and that'll make them look up to you? Well, why don't you include a link to your site in your signature? Maybe, you'll come across some new users that'll help your build your new community just because they like you. We learn from successful forum owners just like yourself, so if you have any ideas that we didn't cover, then feel free to post them!
After years of being involved in the delivery of paid posting services and having served hundreds of forum owners I can tell you that paid posting is not worthless. It is not by any stretch a "set and forget" silver bullet solution to forum community growth, but a sustained and long-term approach to forum growth inclusive of paid posting is by no means any less effective than other measures which bring a temporary poster to your community. Post exchanges operate in the same way only you trade your time and effort instead of money.
That is excellent information. Let me ask a question, do you bother with backlinks, or do you just do posting in your forum?
I try to do both. I build backlinks all the time - as well as have one of my business partners post in my community. He's doing pretty well if I do say so myself.
Main Point for getting Good Traffic is: To get most out your site theme and content is SEO. 60% to 85% traffic is based on Search Engines. SEO plays an important role in all this. Depending on your site you should try doing SEO. An Example would be my own site and forum. Yahoo! FanClub site and Yahoo! FanClub Forums 1. Link Exchanging: Now link exchanging never means to just exchange link. It means to exchange link with common interest sites. Example a site selling fish can exchange link with Honda bike website. But that wont lead to any traffic. But if fish site exchanges link with tuna site ... that will earn some good and healthy traffic. 2. SEO by Link Exchange: Each site which is listed in Search engine has a certain level of trust built in the search engine. Exchanging links with similar theme helps search engines trust the new pages faster. Link exchange shows the grow of your site. 3. Beware: Sometimes non theme related listing can lead to temporary ban coz of spam listing. Some other points for a community. 1. Good Navigation: A poorly setup navigation can lead to decrease alot of users daily. Website or Community.. you need to make the navigation clear and simple. Best would be setup a page regarding your site navigation if there is anything complex. 2. Color Code: Color plays an important role. Many users dislike websites in black color based layout. Try to get good and active colors to your community.