Whenever I come across a website that is large and similar to my own, I am always curious about when they started, and if recently, how they grew so fast. I own and operate a forum that is a little over 3 years old with 8,000+ members. It has grown quite steadily over the past 3 years, but I'm wondering if this is the most efficient way. I understand the expression, slow and steady win the race, but it seems in the world of internet marketing that many other websites understand how to win the race even faster. I build steady links, and recently have been advertising on Facebook(though for a forum, this isn't ideal). The community is very active, and we rank fairly well for many relevant terms, but I still hear many new members say they "had no idea this website existed". So my question is: When I find these websites(mainly other forums), who have grown tremendesouly in significantly less time than us, how do they do it? Is it just pouring large amounts into advertising(say $100/day on Fb), Sheer luck(Content gone viral), or what?
There are obviously many ways to reach the goal and since I don't know what your forum is about, I can't give any specific tips. But a good rule of thumb is a) content is king , better said unique, interesting content is king. Try to write blog posts/create videos, or even podcasts - what you prefer on the topics you know most about. Once you do this, people are going to remember that you've provided real, valuable information and they're going to come back to your site/forum. And this kind of content is obviously going to spread it self better across social networks and other sites. Of course you can help with spreading the words, using the known methods, like faceboo, twitter, reddit, digg, etc.