I have a general discussion forum for Indians. www.talkindia.net does anyone have any ideas on how to attract users ?
So do you want your forum assessed or do you need promo advice? Although this is not the place for promo advice, how about looking into geo-targeting your audience, say where there are large Indian communities - NYC, Hong Kong...
I need promo advice. People usually say that general forums, with no specific niche or theme dont tend to do well. What exactly is geo-targeting the audience? Do you mean making separate sections for people living in those communities?
No, by geo-targeting I mean targetting your audience by geographic area. So if you wish to reach out, say to the Indian community in Hong Kong, you should look for places they go to online - maybe, in this case, Yahoo HK or a carefully prepared AdSense campaign. Targetting your audience saves you marketing money and slowly brings in new visitors/users who will in turn recommend your site to others.
Write an article about your forum and what it offers. Make sure you read up on how to write a good article (plenty of stuff about that on this forum) as balancing links, content and just enough to whet someones appetite is very important. Then get the article submitted or submit yourself (article alley, ezine articles, etc). Have a look at what your target audience already has available and do some of your own market research with friends, work colleagues, family. Work out how they would use it and go from there to put relevent content in your article. Remember the whole reason of the article is to get traffic into your website so when you've written it - read it out to yourself and think would I want to click on it to see the site. Also make sure that there is a "call-to-action" at key points in the article after you have made a statement that would encourage people to visit. HTH Stuey