How to promote an online forum

How do I get the word out about my forum

[Bio4ce]

How can I get the word out about a forum on one of my sites without being spammy? One of the biggest turn offs for me is when I go to a site's forum, and don't see much activity. That tells me the site isn't very popular and may not be worth a second visit. On the other hand, if I see a site with a lot of participation, I'm more apt to come back again. So how do I get people to my site to participate?

Thanks

[hakre]

hi bio4ce,

you might find the Encouraging Users to post to your website forum [webmasterworld.com] thread interesting.

[cyril kearney]

It's a chicken or an egg problem when you first start of forum.

I think you might tell us a little more about the topic and the audience and perhaps someone will have an idea.

Let me give you an idea of what I mean. Let's say you are trying to reach people that rent online mailing lists. Let's say your product is decoy email addresses to help secure these lists.

Now a forum like that would have some technical questions. How do decoys work? How quickly can a violation be reported? Is there a database of rental abusers?

You really want people to raise a topics like where can I find an opt-in Stamp Collectors list so that list owners (potential customers for your decoys) will keep coming back. Your forum would faciliate the coming together of list owners and list renters.

The major problems are that it is boring and people may not come back. To add spice you might carry questions regarding spam filters, state laws, bulk mailers, data harvesting and things like that.

You and your associates might prime the pump on topics and responses so that it has adequate content at the outset. That's part of the solution.

You still need to get people to come, read your content, respond and come back. You might have everyone log in with their email address and let people opt-in to having responses (to threads they posted to) emailed to them. Those emails might even contain an ad for your Decoy Service.

In the end, if your content is relevant the forum might prosper if you can reach a critical mass. By critical mass
I mean enough real posters so you can stop priming the pump.