I decided to start a forum off of a hobby of mine that I believe, ultimately, will be a popular topic. We have 207 members as of this posting, and about 300 - 500 unique visitors a day. It's been slowing somewhat lately due to people returning as un-unique hits. I've engaged in some of the more obvious methods of promotion such as: - Similar Forums - Forum Signatures (Both mine, and current forum members) - Banner Exchange (with a similar interest website) - Social Networking I've made up business cards to hand out to locals at gun shows, as well as a friend at a local gun store that is going to hand them out to potential members. I've mailed out packets of cards to members to distribute as well all over the state. I'd say the exposure on the cards is probably 500 targeted people a month. I'm trying to get involved with local groups to get their members on board, but not everyone in this area of the market has internet access, or strong internet skills. It's been kinda difficult. I'm open to anything. Prefer stuff that is cost effective, or free. www.texasguntalk.com Thanks.
A gun enthusiast forum with narry a mention of the NRA? Any gun lover should feel short changed. A pro gun forum without any topic of gun safety? The anti-gun community would easily claim politcal incorrectedness and deem your forum irresponsible. Address these two fundamental issues and call us in the morning.
I'm awaiting my NRA Recruiter package to be approved. Besides the TSRA is the Texas branch of the NRA. Keep in mind this is 10 days old. I could care less what anti-gun people think about my site. They aren't my targeted audience and any publicity they can give me will just help me.
You could write some articles about what you're doing with links to the forum. It probably wouldn't hurt to have a couple of blogs pointing to it also. If all the members put up blogs you could likely reach a large amount of people. donrock
I read that thread, and others before posting this. For one, the majority don't say what they are marketing, and two, there is no explanation. What works for one forum (ie. macs) isn't going to work for all. Trying to get a bunch of 60 year old men to blog is not going to be as easy as some 20 year old mac loving college student. I'm just looking for ideas, mainly pertaining to my site and it's content that people may have. I appreciate those that have given insight, and I will add them to my list of ideas to pursue.
Well, it's been 6 months and I figured I'd give an update as to what I learned, and what has worked. Month of March Visits: 12543 (3563 Unique) Google Hits: 145 GoogleBot Hits: 1475 Month of August Visits: 22572 (6272 Unique) Google Hits: 2130 GoogleBot Hits: 39964 Initially nearly all of our traffic was referrals via friends, and our "ad threads" on various national firearm sites. Slowly over the past few months that has dropped off, and Google has stepped in with a constant stream of visitors. I've added vBSEO and their Sitemap Generator, but it's a bit too soon to make a call on that. I did notice that GoogleBot refreshed one of the threads fast enough in the search database that it was ranked 2nd about 10 minutes after it was created. We've had a good sized event, and are planning more. Site is moving along quite nicely for what I expected. Anyone have any remarks? Questions, Comments?