I am new to forums, and I launched a new one last week. I am still fine tuning it, but what are the steps to ensure it is successful. I know to start, the forum owner must generate good content to draw in visitors. Then what? -Social bookmarking (stumbleupon)? -link building? How do you draw in people to join your forum, and how to you keep them active?
I gues you start by giving us a link to it. You need some posts to engage visitors and get them to register. Usually something controvertial. I've seen some people hire posters to get it started. If you've got a budget for it I'd say get lots of people to make 10-20 posts rather than a few to make 100 posts, but tell them that the posts must be relevant and on topic, must have a certain length and must be engaging.
thanks qazu..the topic is sports (NFL football to be specific). the URL is www.sportsforumz.net I have it arranged so that each team has their own forum.
I like the idea and layout it is just going to take a long time to fill up that kind of forum with so many topics and sub-topics.
thats a cool idea. I would make an area where everyone can bitch and moan at each other give a name like the flame pit or something similar and get arguements started. as soon as you have a good arguement put a load of posts about it on the relevant forums for those teams and get as many people involved as you can. ie go to the giants and some other team on about a game they lost and then go to every giants forum you can find signup and post a link saying "check this idiot out he thinks the patriots are better than the giants" then start a new arguement and repeat i think that would work brilliantly if you did it right or you could advertise but wheres the fun in that
1. Link Building 2. Good posts/content 3. Moderators - very important 4. Contests - give back to the members 5. Promotion - adwords/yahoo/msn - this will give you members quick, but not free of course Hope this helps!
1. Your forum needs interaction. 1.2. Post exchange is one possible approach. 1.3. Making multiple accounts for yourself is another approach. 2. If you’re using phpBB, you probably need to install several mods. Though I’m a phpBB user, I admit that phpBB is so inferior to vB.
being unique, there are so many forums out there it isn't funny. Try to be different however appealing.....
The main thing, having interesting threads and posts that encourages a user to join the discussions. Meti