i've had my forum up for a couple of days now, tried making polls etc and I've had alot of "views" but not alot of posts? any ideas on what i can do to fix this?
Too many forums. They all have the same description too. Narrow it down and make it general topics that will draw comments. When you have the topic specific content, break it out. Get the forum style closer to the site colors. The stock colors are never the best pick. Make the forums link more prominant. The list of zero posted forums on the home page says, no info here, move along.
Forums are tough to get started... you just have to stick with it. If you can get it over the hump though, you can't slow them down (it's just a snowball effect). Now I can't get people to stop posting here dammit! heh These are the number of posts at this forum day to day... so as you can see, in the beginning it was slow: It also helps if you have an existing user base to draw from (I had a lot of free web tools that were used a LOT).
I think it is all about energy. If you are into what you are doing and express it, others will feed off it and participate. Kick the ball and it will get rolling, when it slows down kick it a few more times until it rolls on it's own
It always better to start small and then add more forums as it gets more active. Maybe start with just 3 or 4 basic forums like Manufacter - Prepaid Services - Regular services - ETC. Maybe you could also add some time of fun forum like crazy cell phone stories.
SEO1.net has grown very fast right from the beginning because the owner offers what people talking about SEO want. The top posters get sitewide links and free directory listings. It's just a sweet deal. Now that wouldn't work on www.grungeforum.com so I'me giving away a couple of used grunge CDs every month. Now I'm also advertising and stuff, but since I bought the site a month ago (it was 2-3 months old already), the number of users and posts have both doubled...
http://www.cellnn.com/PNphpBB2.html Saying 'Forum is DEAD!' about a forum that's only a few days old is exactly like saying 'I give up. I might as well just dump the boards.' A mailing list would help, since you could let hundreds or thousands of people suddenly know about it. Since you're using phpbb, there's probably a hack some where that you can use that will make a quick registration form show up for those not registered. When I used that with vBulletin, I made one show up on the top of the index, and top of the board and thread pages. They generated a LOT of new members. Make it as easy as possible for users to register. And don't force them to check there E-mail and click a link before they can post! And yes, for a new board, you got way too many boards! Start with just a few, at max!
If you only started your forum a couple of days ago and calling it dead already, you may want to reconsider this project. Getting a forum started and rolling is pretty difficult. You could very well go 6 months or more with very little activity. You'll have to stay committed throughout and be prepared for the longhaul. I run a golf forum called Golf Rewind at http://www.golfrewind.com and I'd have to say hard work in the beginning and patience is key. You really have to ask yourself how committed you are to this. I've seen forums get to 300 members after 6 months. Then the owner just gets tired of it and the forum dies. On the other hand, I've seen forums at 300 members after 6 months with a committed admin that ended up thriving in the end. As Shawn pointed out, once a forum gets rolling, it just snowballs. You just have to stick by it. At the beginning of Golf Rewind, I was happy just to see someone new sign up each day. Now, I get around 10 registrations per day. I'm betting it will be more in the future.
Most people lose their interest on their site when they can't get traffic within a few dsays. But to get traffic and lots of it within a few days could mean a high advertising budget. ( Note I said Advertising and not Marketing ) Don't give up just yet, it would be in a few months before you see the results. Some takes years depending on the theme.
I've heard of forum owners that hire people to "populate" a new forum using 4-5 user names. This was a shocking discovery for me at that time... How about posting some intriging threads that trigger the readers to want to reply. Like... hmm... "Nokia phones are the worst"... (be more creative than me). Good luck.
Another problem is that there are just too many forums online today, every website seems to have one. There are so many webmaster forums now (too many Chiefs and not enough Indians in that town) and they get boring in a hurry as most of them have the same subjects for threads and people get tired of reading about the same things over and over. That is why some of the crazy threads (those that get folks fighting) are the most popular here. How many folks want to read about the next PR update over and over, a lot of folks post to those threads but I don't even read them anymore most of the time. Sometimes folks will post the same subject over and over because it worked last week and they want to start a hot thread in the hope that it will be popular again. I could start a thread with the words " PR Update" in it and a hell of a lot of folks would look at it just because it says update. So maybe you could pick up some "buzz words" and put up some content threads and pull in some members from the SERP's based on those buzz words.
There's a saying... "Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd". I know when I find a forum and there are zero posts, I quickly find a different one. I don't want to waste my time and efforts posting to a place where I probably won't get a response. Have you thought about "Editorials". In a new forum of mine I have just started posting thoughts and information about news articles that I find interesting. Also, search engines will like you more if you have more pages/content which will eventually drive traffice up even more.
Post post and post some more. However, the problem here, and it's not been awknowledged, is the forum has a cookie cutter look. Not one description is unique and there is zero content. We can stroke the girls ego all day, but let's do some business here.
i'm not looking for stroking i need solid advice, thats why i'm here. i appreciate honesty, and take no offense. i need to change things up i totally agree, you guys have given me alot of great "duh" tips already that i should have thought of, but you know once you have your mind on a track you ride with it? thanks for the info, anything you think is greatly accepted.