Hello, I own a Final Fantasy Forum (forum.final-fantasyonline.com), which I bought recently, It's quite big, has 50,000+ posts 2,500+ threads and 1,600+ members. There's a blog also at final-fantasyonline.com. The problem is that the site had some problems in the past, so it was shutdown for some time and had some servers changes also, then I think that many members left the forum because of it. Right now it has good incoming traffic from SEs, but I think it's not enough for the size of the forum. I've been thinking of so many things, but cant really find a good way to bring back the old members, bring new members and make the forum active again. Im sure it has big potential... I just dont know how to explore it. So, what should I do? I wanted suggestions from the experts here Thank you!
yeah, send email to users that left saying that the forum is up again also, your forum need to be alive, new posts and threads is needed and you can make unregistered member can't see links so they need to register, and your member increase btw, i am not an expert
Mass mail to the current members that the site is active again Submit it to search engines again Keep it uptodate If possible hire some posters for a few day
To be honest, you need to make it active with whatever strategy and tactics. You may either send email to registered users and convinced them to come back or even hire someone to participate in forums to make it active.
Yeah, Im gonna write an email informing that the site is UP again, Im not very good with newsletters but I'll give my best xD Also, avpower do you think really that is a good idea to dont let unregistered members see the content, so that I obligate them to register?
Social bookmarking and online advertisement are best options. You may also use many of the free classified sites.
I think this is the worst section you can ever have on a forum. Its kind of cheesy if you ask me, and normally the intro ends up with a bunch of pointless posts...hi, Im back...hi im from here or there...normally half to 1 liners at best. To be honest, most forums follow each other by starting pointless threads that have no content value.
Yeah I agree in part with you, it doesnt really have a good function, but all forums have it maybe because it increases the activity on the forum, so I guess it's worth
I have no idea, but most of the traffic I get now comes from Search Engines, the traffic generated by members is really very low.
If you have the budget, there are services where you can outsource forum posting. You pay a sum of money and then 10-15 people come in, create several different kind of accounts and start cross-posting and interacting, asking questions, opening threads and answering. But I guess for this to have an impact in a larger forum it could eat quite deeply into your budget. You should determine beforehand if the advertising income is making up for that. You could also make use of social sites like facebook, twitter and all that but this is not my field of expertise so I can't help you much with that. (However, these social sites make sense since a forum is nothing else than a social environment).
Other people already suggested me on buying posts, but I dont like the idea, since it becomes artificial and also it's like "playing" with the real forum members, so I prefer to have everything original. And yea, I started making some promoting in Facebook and other things. I think that the best way I have right now is to send a good newstletter to the registered members and maybe make an contest or something with a nice prize, so it'll attract them.
How about asking your members to refer their friends and pay them some incentives like referral system. Or you can use PPC ads but using banner type for branding purposes. Don't forget to send newsletter to your current members.
Do you do paid posting for a few different reasons... if you do it right, then your posts will look natural... send me a pm and I will explain more...