I'm starting a new forum and here is my idea - I'm going to start promoting the site before I accually launch it and when people go to the site it will request they submit there email and will automatically be notified when i launch the forum, i will also have the launch date on the main page too (for people who dont want to submit an email). The reason I think this is a good idea is then i can get a bunch of participation all at once (hopefully). I'm not sure if this will work.. what do you guys think?
Ummmm... Unless it were someone that I really knew & trusted to deliver a high quality site, I wouldn't play that game. But that's just me. Usually the trick with forums is to build your community naturally, and with just a lot of posting. Get some friends to help you out (even if they're not in your target market) just to start conversations. I think you'd be better off just launching the forum also so that you can moderate effectively. If all of a sudden you had a bunch of people posting, but half of it spam - you'll lose the respect of those people that want to participate. Good luck. What's your market?
Hi timophy, I did a similar thing with my site. I got a list of people who were interested in my site, and then contacted them all just before i launched and asked them to create an account for when the website went live. A similar thing could work for you.