how to promote a forum

[Jinker]

hi,all

i made a forum for one month, but there are still few members .

so, who can give me some advice how to bring more members?

thanks.

[buksida]

Many different ways, have a hunt through previous threads here, most will have good posts on the following:

creating alternative accounts to provoke reaction
banner exchanges with other sites/forums
promotion within your own site
cards/flyers distributed
SEO techniques and applying mods

such as this one:
[webmasterworld.com...]

it is long hard work but very rewarding when your community comes together, keep at it!

[rogerd]

One good way to reach an audience who knows how to participate in forums is to post in other forums; if the other forums allow signature URLs, put your forum in your sig. Please don't spam the other forums, though, as your promotion will be short lived, you will be publicly ridiculed (before your posts are deleted), and you'll turn off prospective participants. Rather, focus on becoming a productive member of those communities, sharing your knowledge and offering help - this will do much more for your cause than posting, "Hey! Check out my new forum!" ;)

[zigx]

what rogerd said is soooooo right.

You can build up your forum by posting on similar forums and just proving (by what you contribute) that your forum is worth their time.

Your attitude and content on other forums should be reflective of what you have to offer, but save the BEST stuff for yours hehe.

If you think of this from a marketing perspective -- advertising a forum on a forum is extremely targeted advertising.

i mean these guys are forum goers, and u have a forum there for them to goto.

SPAMing is not the route to go, though, always remember that. Your contributions reflect how your forum is and i would bet that most people who just slam boards with fake posts and click me threads have forums of lower quality.

ONE last thing is dont play God on your board. You need to interact with the people there and have a good time. :)

Just my opinions.

[rogerd]

>>You need to interact with the people there and have a good time.

Well said, zigx. Successful forums are almost always a labor of love and not a calculated strategy. A shrewd businessperson will calculate the ROI on forum time and look elsewhere for a quick buck. :)

[freeflight2]

the secret of successful forums is to be the best in a very particular niche... try to focus on only a very limited topic, don't dilute your forums by trying to cover too many topics. Once you get traffic and after 1 or 2 years you can try to expand beyond the original topic. It's all and only about topic/content and social aspects such as appointing moderators, featuring members, ranks etc... you need to have people fall in love with your forums and have them do all the marketing for you.

[aghill]

how to bring more members?

That's the big question that we all face.... unfortunately I don't have THE answer, but will share a strategy that I'm starting to embark upon and maybe it will help the collective creative juices. Note: I'm just starting to pursue this strategy, so no guarantees that it's going to be worth anything... I run a regional fishing forum, and over the last year and a half it has become the number 1 forum for my particular niche, that doesn't mean that much though since my competition is negligble. Anyway, while brainstorming new ways to attract traffic I came up with the idea of offering to host forums for the real world clubs in my region. Many of these clubs have outdated websites, with nominal or nonexistent forums. Seems like a good way to expand traffic by providing a useful service to my target demographic.

So... my advice is to look to the real world, and see if there's something you can do for your desired demographic.

The other advice posted is very sage advice. If unintentionally, I've followed it over the life of my forums and it seems to be paying off. I started by posting on similar forums, with a signature line and maybe even a spam post(gasp! but I wasn't selling advertising or attempting to generate income at the time so it was only pseudo-spam... that's my story and I'm sticking to it!); I've made an effort to make the site about the community, and not me.... it's all worked well so far!

[Musicarl]

Excellent advice. I will add:

Hang in there. It took us a few months, but after about a year, we had very active forums.

Be careful what you wish for. Forums can suck up a lot of bandwidth and get real hard to police when you have a lot of users. Without really good moderators, we'd be screwed.