How to create a growing forum

I have just this month launched the holiday home owners forum, and would like some advise.

The forum was created in September, but have been adding content so it doesn't look completely bear.

I have sent an email to clients and subscribers of my holiday home owners newsletter but so far only a small number of people have signed up. I'm trying to add new content every day to keep it fresh but do you have any other ideas and tips to create a growing community style forum.

Thanks,
Darren

 

Shawn, sure will I thought that my clientbase (over 3,000 subscribers to my newsletter) would rush to such a forum (since there isn't any other related forum) but its slowww.

 

Do like Shawn does; trick people into signing up by creating vague tools that cause problems and need explaining

Only joking of course.

Announce something (a change to the site or change in policy, post interesting industry news or whatever) and ask them for their opinion. People are always up for giving their opinion.

 

Yeah I agree. I actually rank #1 for holiday home owners forum from an old attempt at a forum, which I took down, and since it's getting cold out I thought people might have more time to participate lol so redesigned it.

I get zero hits from the KW's

SEO the forum and then contact different eating disorder organisations and websites and ask them if they want to link to your forum, so that the members or visitors can communicate with other members who may have an eating disorder.

 

Get hot women to post their avatars. It's worked for some!

 

visit The Forum Zone ... its a decent site dedicated to forum owners and growing a forum .. might get some more help over there.

 

This thread at seochat has some good ideas; the last post is good too:

http://forums.seochat.com/showthread.php?t=14583&page=2&pp=15

 

Another good resource for forum admins is http://www.theadminzone.com/

 

I think the first thing to do is write a few articals (good ones) so that the forum looks active at first then go old AdWords whilst you try to get your keywords listed ( plus AdWords you can see if you are targeting right words for traffic )

As for getting guest to sign up well thats the golden egg there are loads of ideas out there but I think it depends on the forum subject i.e web forums people will sign up as they know its not a big deal but other topic my not have quiet so web savy guests

Sometimes it just takes time and a bit of luck

I have one and was off the back of another related site , but its still grows slowly but nicely in my view

 

I get pretty turned off when I see the post count being pretty low. Keep posting any idea or article that you may need. Either come up with a free product or offer support for an existing one.

 

I had an offer as follows (and still do)

15 posts - an anchor link on every page of the forum for 2 weeks
30 posts - 1 month
50 posts - a banner ad

My is a business forum and is damm hard - even after 6 months it justs ticks along - probably 30/40 posts a day - not like here !!

People like to be involved with the forum owner - so I always post to new posts and get involvement - hope this helps

 

I'm a webdesigner so I pay more attention to this but MAKE SURE YOU'RE NOT USING THE DEFAULT FORUM THEME. All I need is a splitsecond to recognize the default forum theme from phpBB, invisionboard, vBulletin, ... , it makes the forumadmin look like someone who doesn't want to "invest" in the forum and if the admin doesn't bother to invest in the forum, why should I as a member ?

 

I don't think it's pointless. I noticed a big change when I started doing this for one of my forums. "widget forum" and "widget forums" get only maybe 50 searches a day on the keyword tracker tools, but I've noticed they make quite a difference. even if you only get half of that to click once you're in the #1 spot, and only half of those to register, that's still 12 or so new registrations per day, which is really pretty decent for a new forum

we've also do incentive based things to get people to sign up as well. it does increase those joining, but a lot don't post... including people that don't post, I think we get a few hundred registrations a day

when you're actually just starting things up, some people have suggested creating multiple fake accounts and start some fake discussions to make things look active. it might work, if you want to spend the time on it. if you don't, at least get some friends to sign up and post a few times or something

 

MMM not sure I have the same view point as you as a great content is far more important than a super looking site ( but every things does help )

look at this one

 

It doesn't have to be a complete re-design but I've seen enough out of the box forums where the admins hadn't even changed the logo of the board.

 

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum103/212.htm

Also, try writing some fairly contraversial posts. People will link to it and talke abot it...