I'm trying to get traffic to my Swimming Forums, problem is, swimmers don't usually hang around the sites that I'm used to advertising on. Swimmers don't really browse other forums, so I can't use my usual signature-link methods. Right now, I am advertising at Yahoo! Answers, and while I am getting traffic, it's very slow. I am considering investing in PPC, but I don't know how well that's going to work. So how can I traffic to my swimming forum? I want to run a contest to boost traffic - but I need some traffic to start that up first!
This is where good offline marketing can kick ass, Do you have a swim team or club what ever, They should have a blilbord some place, put a ad up there. as for online marketing, do you have any friends on facebook or twitter that share you passion for swimming? do you know of any good diving forums? there are lots out there. Start posting on them. Trust me swimmers use the internet just as much as anyone else.
The truth is that you may never gain a large amount of members or activity. There are subjects that simply don't make good forums. I would guess the discussions around swimming are pretty minimal even if you're a competition swimmer.
That's what I fear, but I personally think it's still doable. Looking at the United States Masters Swimming (basically competitive adult teams) swimming forum, it's very active. I know another swimming forum which has a lot of posts but is kind of dead. I feel that if I work hard enough, I will get to a point where I feel my forum is successful. In no way am I expecting to reach traffic levels as high as Digital Point, but somewhere around 100 or so posts a day would be great (of course I would work up from there, but it would be a hell of a lot easier than getting to that first 100/day).
You could also try branching out wider to include more people still keep your fouse as swiming but branch a little, into other aqua sports you might want to include them