I was wondering how we can make a forum successfull. Its a cyclic process for a forum to get clicked. Peoples should post messages for others to visit the forum and post again. Then how can a site initially withstand this pressure? Ther are hundreds of successful forums and how they might have got the forum active??? I think you got my point .
This should probably be in the forum management forum. Basically you just need to advertise it well and stick with it. Keep it appearing active.
Do some PPC, and give some stuff free in your forum to make it attractive as well, like you can give away free domain after each 100 posts to a member, who made them. Give free info on the topic of your forum, like if your forum is about cars - you can get a reports of which cars are well sold for this year or something like that.
Write a good introductory post. Write interesting articles. Make it distinct from your competitors. Don't put ads on it in the beginning. Do some marketing techniques such as "get xx posts and you'll join the vip section." All these have worked for me.
Forum are the people. Concentrate on bringing in a couple of proven and experienced people willing to share their experience on the subject and you'll instantly get a bunch of new people asking the questions
Early on, visitors who contribute, quickly offer them a chance to be moderator. It's an easy way to retain new members.
Absolutely. When several friends of mine maybe a year (or year and a half, I don't remember really) initiated their first forum (specialized in medicine), they stepped on this very understanding - forum are the people. Whatever is done on the given forums, it would be successful if done by the right people and addressed to the right ones.
the get xx posts in order to join the vip section is a good tactic. Another one worth mentioning is the contest/competition thing. Create some sort of a competition (nothing hard or difficult for your general visiting community) and then reward the best ones with prizes or something. Create a section where people would have the possibility to post suggestions, make a vote on something. Then implement the winning suggestion. Not only will you enhance the forum and increase the traffic but you will make the visitors and participants feel important. That is a really good tactic. Hope it works out and Best of luck!
My forum is at the edge of extinction and I almost ignored it and started a new one. This time I would like to do something different. Wht about getting some initial posts by paying for the post? Is ther any recognised sites offering this service?