How to promote a forum

Anyone have some advice for promoting a forum? I want to have a productive forum, but I need visitors to get moving, I paid for a dozen people to post on it , I registered it in the search engines and its linked to my main site, are backlinks as important for forums? any forum specific places to advertise?

If you can have a look and advice on what else I can do it would be appreciated
http://forums.w8lossreviews.com


THanks in advance

 

Try blog reviews from sites that share the same similar niche as your forum.

 

Jfarmer,

What you've done so far will definitely help. What else you can do? Backlinking - for sure. Try to orientate in your niche, contact the site and blog administrators, initiate a link exchange. Backlinking will help you get a very targeted traffic. Adding an eye-catching signature to your posts on forums like DP also works well. These are only a few tips to keep in mind, hope they help Sorry, I don't have the time to take look at the forums right now.

 

I also have a forum of my own. But it doesn't contains a single paid post.

I spend most of my time promoting it.

First try and submit it to the directories. Then go to some relevant forums and put on some good posts (Contribute to the forum) and show off your signature as I am showing off mine here

Get some contests rolling. Give some free services to users. Get some friends and online contacts to help you out.

 

It takes time... It took me about 6-12 months to get my forum going, I sold it last year when it had 6,000 members.

Now I am contemplating if I want to start another one... it's alot of work!

 

I'm having problems getting mine going to be honest. I am going to get paid posts soon as I believe an active forum is more appealing to new users than anything else.

 

Buy ezine ads. They'll email your site to thousands of targetted people.

 

Why don't you post on your own forum. Add informative post to your forum.

 

you can think of a forum as a regular website and market it as such.You can do backlinking through article marketing and directory submission.If the initial posts are good and productive, many people will like to join.

 

Well said craigslistguy. Hey that is a very good name do you work for them or just list there? Sorry but I had to ask.

 

I think getting people to post on your forum, whether you have to pay for it or not is definetly going to make it more appealing to other visitors, then get signature links wherever you post and try and get any other sites in the same area as your forum to add a link, not only getting your page rank up a bit, but also directing traffic.

Your forum does look like it will be really good when it gets visitors, hopefully webmasters of other weight loss sites will agree and so you could probably convince a lot of them to give you a link.

Hope that helps

 

I think you will only need to advertising and make your website as much as popular!

for example:


Everybody, come and have a look on this website!
Http://www.queenbikini.com/
The most beautiful girl ever seen:
http://www.queenbikini.com/showthread.php?t=5

Thanks

 

All I can suggest is submitting your site to many directories. You have to go with a similar approach to promoting websites and blogs, lots and lots of a directories. Writing articles may help you out too and submitting them to article sites. You could even grab a few free articles related to the niche and post them on your forum. It might do your search engine ranking some good, lots of relevant information.

 

that was an example!

I have seen it on some website, then just copied and pasted!
enjoy, everyone!

 

that is useful too,

 

I have to agree there is a lot of good information in this thread. Even if you where to use just a couple of them you would get more visitors to your site.

 

I NEVER used paid posters on my forum... I developed some "guerilla marketing" ideas that I used. I won't share them, because I can't say I would recommend them for the weak of heart.

 

I'm going to give you an honest, although perhaps not popular opinion.

I don't like the advertising on the site. Monetize once you have content. Ads turn people off. By putting them up when you are just starting out, hinders your ability to grow a community.

Second, your header looks like an ad. No fat person wants to see a skinny person with the caption "tired of being overweight"?

It reads like a sales pitch, not an invitation.

Of course overweight people are tired of being overweight. Have you ever heard a fat person say they want to put on more weight?

Put something up there that soft sells your community.

"Losing weight together"
"Dieting support"
"Weight loss community"

You can promote all you want, but you're not going to easily attract organic members who will post tons of free content for you if the site looks like what it is. A billboard for affiliate ads.

Personally, I don't like this kind of approach, because as SERG wrote, it's a lot of work to grow a forum and there are easier approaches to making money through sitebuilding and monetization.

But if you're going to do it, don't sabotage yourself from the start. Take the time to check out competing forums in the same niche with lots of active members and ask yourself honestly, what will my board offer that the other one does not? If you don't have anything to offer to build a community, spend your time or money on MFA sites. You'll save a lot of both and be happier for it.

 

Very interesting take on forum building guerilla. Some of the information you posted makes sense.

 

Yes, I waited until I had about 500 REAL members before I put any ads on... don't scare people away at first...