need ideas.. got kinda rusty on marketing/advertising. http://wiredthinking.com/forum <<< thats the forum and i will be changing the bg. just dry on ideas atm
you can buy posts.....that will help get it started...no one wants to go to a dead forum....and just promote add links everywhere you think people would go...
Get your forum active. Either pay for posts, or create usernames and post yourself. Advertise the forum, get it listed good in search engines. Run a contest to get activity up.
Content! Content! Content! Content is king! 100 great posts will pull in one new member. 1000 crappy posts can do the same. The best way to get those 100 great posts is to start 10 great threads Keyword rich posts can often find their way onto page one of Google (yahoo, MSN, etc.) This is called SERP (Search Engine Rank Position) and is something I'd LOVE for us to be on top of for most forums here... sadly, we'll need more then content though, but meh, that's another topic. Good posts and threads CAN help though, and are the likely the best method of pulling in new members aside from paid advertisements and in many cases word of mouth campaigns. So, feel free to start random conversations. Even if they only get a few crappy replies. You can always bump them if you feel there are enough members to get a conversation going again. I know there are things you'd love to discuss but don't think people are ready for. Post them anyway, the people will come... You can also try Link Development (my personal suggestion) as links help get the word out, and if done correctly is the best means of advertising!
Here's what I've been doing. Step 1) Find a brick wall Step 2) Bang my head into it Seriously, forum building from scratch has been the most difficult thing I've done on the net. Most of my traffic comes from the threads being indexed in Google, and even getting good results from SEO hasn't yielded a lot of posters for me. Good luck though!
i had a forum once that i got alot of members within the 1st 3 days. 700 and counting till the moment it got hacked by a rivel who didnt want me to reach anywhere.. just with this one my idea is way different.. i dont care about alot of members. just enough active ones to get things moving and create the pace for the others who join
There's no point actually... Do post exchanges and post a ton of new content if you have to do it by yourself then by all means do it. Everyone starts somewhere!
it was from scratch. and it was just a place to hang out.. more around the hip hop theme though. i was a moderator of a forum and i had about 32k posts there.. (was a member for 2 yrs) before me and the admin got into it about how he treated his members. so i started my own thing and alot of people followed and told there friends about it.
That's great news man... How come you didn't backup everything? Haha, the hip hop forums are pretty easy to start up if you know what you're doing and in this case you knew what you were doing.
You'll get there don't even worry about it. Its hard but you'll get their eventually.. If you could do it once you can do it again.
i'm working on a low budget atm. yeah i'm not too worried about it. i'm seeking quality members and not a whole lot of members.
I don't like the background, it is to eye catching for my taste! With a discrete background it would look much better in my opinion !