OK. I don't normally need promotion advice, but I'm not sure where to begin: I just set up a forum on a subdomain of my business site. I may eventually get a new name / domain and re-direct it, but that's really not an issue now. The forum is meant to be a supplemental resource for the three sites I run for the All Info About network: www.AllInfoAboutMarketing.com www.AllInfoAboutConsulting.com www.AllInfoAboutSmallBusiness.com (coming soon) Most of the traffic will eventually be tied to those sites, and linked to from there extensively (main menu, blog, at the end of all articles once I have a chance to add them), etc. That's why I'm not really worried about a new domain. I'm not looking to push the forum separately as a unique site, but rather as an add-on feature for those. My question is about how to really get it started though. I put out the word to colleagues who may have an interest last night, so we'll see if that helps. I'm sending press releases out in a little while. I've started threads and polls to make it easier to get involved, and I've set up plenty of areas (hopefully) in the marketplace section to attract people who want to freely promote their own services, post job listings, buy and sell sites, etc. I really don't want to buy forum posts. Something about that idea just really bothers me, and I'm concerned about quality issues and suddenly having a bunch of inactive users. But I'd still like to get a little bit of posting going on before I promote too heavily on the sites and have people directed to an empty forum. I've also heard that it can work by setting up alter egos and essentially talking to yourself. I'm not crazy about that idea either, but if it would help, I guess I'll do it. Once it's going, I have no doubt that I'll be able to promote it effectively through those sites and through my own network of business owners and freelancers. It's just getting it started so they're more inclined to join in that I'm unsure about. If anyone has advice or stories to share, I'd love to hear them. btw, right now the forum's set up at http://smallbusinessforum.jhmattern.com Thanks! Jenn
If you are not into buying then would you consider trading for something else? I've started a forum about two weeks ago and I offered to DP members to join and post on my forum for a link on one of my PR6 site for a month. It got me over 60+ users and more than 100 posts with that technique. Maybe you should try something like that.
I'm not sure about that particular tactic for me, since I think my top ones are only at PR4 right now, and except for my directory, I'm pretty fussy about who I link to just for quality reasons, b/c most are business-related. It's a good idea in general though. Someone else here was doing reciprocal posting, and I thought that was a great idea and did that with 2 people today. If anyone has any interest in reciprocal posting, PM me. Thanks for the idea. Jenn
Because the forum is tied to three sites with three separate, yet similar, focuses, I need to keep a lot of it separate. There's a small business site, a marketing/pr site, and a consulting / freelance site that all had to be covered (quite simply b/c trying to launch and manage 3 at once when they're bound to have plenty of overlap would be far too time consuming to pull off right now). Today was actually a better start than I expected. I'll probably just see if I can find more people interested in reciprocal posting, then opt for an alter ego or two to get discussions going if I have to, then resorting to buying posts as a last resort. I wouldn't want to cut anything out just yet, especially since a lot of my friends and colleagues haven't had a chance to read the announcements yet. I'm really hoping enough of them step up and help out. *crossing my fingers* Jenn
if ur looking to give your forum seperate identity i suggest u make some banners for your forum and add them on your network websites, announce some give aways, gifts, contests, i might be doing that in future, i own a biz forum myself.
I don't want a separate identity though. I want it to be as tied to them as possible. Soon enough I'm going to be adding links to start a discussion in the forum to the bottom of every article I write to help. I've added it to the navigation for the two of the three sites that are technically live now. Maybe a little button ad or something in a column would help though. Not a bad idea. Thanks! Jenn
People don't start come to your forum and start posting magically. 1. There needs to be some content built. 2. There need to be a lot of interactions. 3. Forum needs to have some visibility in search engines; otherwise, new members won't be coming in and start registering. Post exchange, paid posting service of self-posting in order to address 1 and 2. SEO to address 3.
You need to get the posting started, as the previous poster said people don't just sign up and make posts in an empty forum. You'll either need to post yourself or pay people to do it for you. The forum also needs to be a very high traffic site to sustain momentum, in my experience at least 1000 people need to be visiting the forum every day to keep things fresh and keep people posting.
My guess is that a couple of hundred visitors would be sufficient for you to start seeing new members signing up, but ... you know, if the forum is practically empty (less than 500 posts), you will not get that traffic. Even if you magically manage to do that, you still won't see new members signing up because the forum looks like a wasteland. So, ... post exchange, paid posting, self posting or some combination.
Why don't you start a contenst that works like this: Pose a challenging question to your target audiences that relates to the subject matter of the forums. Something subjective and open ended. Ex: Describe a step-by-step method for delivering traffic to a packaged goods site with a 500$ marketing budget. Have people join the site and post, answering the question the best they can. This will stimulate discussion, but most of all, you can offer a prize for the answer that is deemed "Most Effective" by a "Panel of Experts." You can moderate the forums, posing questions back to some of the posters, and since the number of posters will be low to start, hopefully you can develop an inistial group of "forum leaders" that will stimulate further discussion. Give people a reason to become involved, and treat them as elite professionals and ground floor forum members - let them lead your forums, but encourage them through active moderation, prizes, and competition/recognition. Does this make sense? It was a spur of the moment idea, I'd like to know what anyone thinks.
Thanks for the tips everyone. It's been going ok so far, but the contest tip was an especially good one, and I've got a few ideas. The forum was tied to my sites on the AIA network. I've since started another business site layout on a new domain I just registered (will likely be leaving the network shortly, as I'm moving my content elsewhere), and I'm going to be moving the forum to another subdomain under the new site, and hopefully finding a better template or at least changing the color scheme to match the new site and getting a logo worked out. So I'll give a contest a go once I get to that point (hopefully w/in the week). Jenn
My advice to you is pay forum posters to increase your post counts. Most people when they visit a forum will first see if the forum is popular/has some posts before posting and contributing to the forums. No one wants to join a dead forum. So to get things started, pay a few forum posters to increase your post counts.
(Good) Contest can only work if there are some members and some activities. Reward needs to pretty attractive to boost post counts though. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but ... getting a couple of thousand posts or more is the first step.