We have had the forum for quite a long time but don't really have any idea how to get it rolling. The forum is http://japforum.com/ We do have other web sites relates to japaneseimports which was why we thought it may be a good idea start a forum. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated
First off I would create an entirely unique theme, generally you don't want to keep the default prosilver layout because it is boring and somewhat expected. Then I would go and get a professional logo and banner made. Finally to get traffic, ask all your friends to join. Make a group on facebook devoted to promoting your forum (just don't spam). Lastly consider making a few youtube videos that are similar to your forums subject matter and include your url at the beginning of the video and also in the video description. Hope that helps. -Ghazgrim
Isn't the term "jap" considered derogatory by the Japanese? You might want to start by having a more respectful name. And you certainly need a custom theme or at least made some adjustments so that your site is unique.
seo for the keyword "Japanese import forum." That way you know all the people doing that search are definitely looking for a forum related to Japaneses imports.
1)Add Content to your forum regularly. Without good content, these tips are useless! 2) Ask your friends, relatives, family and anyone you know who would find your site interesting to join your forum. Ask them to post useful tips, tricks etc related to your topic. Ask them to a place a link to you site in their forum sigs their sites, their blogs etc. 3) Place a link or a banner to your site on your forum sig. That is a very traffic producing trick for me at least! If you have a very attractive banner, the better. If you don't know how to make a banner, either you could take some tutorials, or you could purchase one from someone. You could also ask your other Admins/partners whether they know how to. I would recommend you Adobe Photoshop. 4) If you have a good budget, then you could try some PPC(Pay-Per-Click) services like Google Adwords and YPN. This is a very useful method. It's good if you put good and to-the-point Meta TAGS and Keywords. If you get lucky, you might get a big boost with this. 5) Submit you site to as many Search Engines as possible. The best would be Google and Yahoo! You might want to add good content and update it regularly. Google likes content! Don't know if this is true, but, i got better results with Google after i added a Google Search to my forum. Better try it. 6) Submit it to as many Directories and Topsites as possible. Be sure to submit it into one which is somewhat related to your website. Tip for topsites: Place the button on a page of your site which is regularly visited. You could try placing attention gathering arrows around it. 7) Join forums related to your website (follow point no. 3). Post quality content and help other members. Once you help others, you'll get a good reputation. And once you have a good reputation, members would want to go to your site for advice and other stuff. 8) IF there is a Advertising Section on a related-to-your-site forum, post your website for reviews. If there is no Advertising Section, don't go Spamming around asking people to rate your website. That won't give you any reputation and would probably get you banned! 9) Join your web-host's forum. There HAS to be a Advertising section. Post your site there. 10) Post articles on Article websites. This is one of the best methods to gain popularity. This gives you a better PR too! 11) Submit articles to Social Bookmark websites like Digg It! and del.icio.us etc. If you get into the front page, you might get a 1000 users coming to your site immediately! 12) Create RSS feeds and place them on your site. This will make sure members keep coming back to your site. 13) Give out a weekly or monthly newsletter and do place a link to your website on it. If you have great articles on that newsletter, readers might want to come to your site. 14) If you're a rich man,you could try placing ads on newspapers and Yellow Pages. There must be atleast 100,000 people reading those. At least 500 would find your site interesting! 17) Affiliate with many known websites. You get backlinks as well as a lot of visitors! This is a very traffic generating method. 18) Have competitions on your site. People love to win prizes! If you are lucky, this could work like a charm. 19) Use the 'Bookmark This Site' code on your site. If people bookmark your site, they could just never forget about it. This would ensure that they do come back. 20) If you have any problem with your site, ask for help on other sites with a link to it. Some forums with very harsh rules might remove the link, but i'm sure they won't ban you. 20) Create cool CSS layouts and other graphics. Post them on graphic related sites with a link to your site. If you liked the tips, a rep is appreciated. FaNtEcH
I would not use phpBB as it is prone to spammers registering to advertise viagra and similar stuff so my free choice would be MyBB forum, www. mybboard.net This software has a little bit of vBulletin and IPB, in fact you can find skins that resembles those popularly known as characteristic of the paid versions MyBB Forum (the same as phpBB) has a mod to add a RSS robot poster. I would put one of these robots to deliver news in each category as community is building up and post count runs up
Thanks for the advice all taken on board and we have now started on facebook. You are correct about the logo so that will be changed also.
You are correct jap can be classed as derogatory by the Japanese but is widely used in the wes so maybe I will have to find some common ground and redirect to an acceptable URL, I will be changing the look of it also. Seo'd the keyword japanese import forum and got a few more ideas from that, we also have http://www.japaneseimports.co.uk and http://www.japanesecars.co.uk so I guess a few links may help. Thanks for all the advice and a special thanks to FaNtEcH you have really taken the time to come up with some great advice that should really help us.