Forum Launching/Marketing - Need advice.

First of all I haven't started a forum before, but if you use word press I am sure that you can google plugins to create forums and everything that you are looking for. Thats what I have done with all my websites and it works for me. Just do the research and you will fine what you are looking for.

Now PM'ing you.

Hi Ant

There are a lot of things you can do to get it started but in order to get people to sign up you are going to need content. Even if you SEO the website well and build consistent links to your site it will still be extremely hard to get members to sign up if you don't have conversations started already.

I have helped clients launch a few forums and here is basically what I do.

1. Create over 100 accounts on your forum, so the the stats "current members" doesn't say an extremely low number as this will put people off from the start.

2. Pick around 5 of those accounts and open up around 100+ threads, the way i would do this is to use a keyword tool and find a bunch of longtail keywords. Then use each longtail keyword in the thread title. For example "cool drum and bass tunes" your thread title could be "what are some cool drum and bass tunes?". Get the idea?

3. With the other 4-5 accounts go back through and answer your own questions in the threads you have created. The way i would do this is open 5 tabs in your browser. Then simply start a thread in one and with the others quickly go back through it.

4. Because the titles of your threads are long tail keywords you will find a small amount of traffic will start trickling in as soon as you get indexed. I love using Digg to get new sites indexed however an easy way is to put the link in a forum such as this one "in your sig".

5. Because it's music related "youtube" will be great for driving traffic. Just download and then re-upload some drum and bass tunez to youtube with a link in your video something along the lines of "Join us in the underground, heavy beats & heavy topics" basically you want to remember what audience you are appealing to afterall targetted traffic is everything.

Anyways i hope some of that helped good luck!

@Cyber Rankings

Wow, thanks fella. I've got a friend who can help me do that actually. It's a real long-term project I want to work on. I get so stressed out with clients sometimes that this is a real release for me to work on in all the spare time I earn now I'm self employed.

Thank you.

No problem at all,

It's good you have a partner setting up a forum is very tedious work, a category that would helping bring your visitors back is something like a "upload your own".

There are a lot of people trying to get noticed for the music they produce and enabling this would keep people coming back to upload any new tracks they have produced and check out the comments people have lef ton their previous tracks.

You could always contact people directly on youtube that are making their own tracks and tell them about your website. I don't know how large your investment is but offering a prize always brings in a lot of members.

Also a lot of drum and bass people love clubing and since you live in the UK you know we lack in decent clubs (well at least where i live) so once you are recieving a fair amount of traffic print off your google analyics report and send it too the top clubs in your area. Explain to them how you have a hungry database of clubbing enthusiasts and how you can help increase there customer base. You will be suprised how much you can earn by just having a "top 5 clubs section" and auctioning off the slots to the highest bidders. Never do this via email as it will just be considered spam. When you actually take the time to type it all up and send it in the post in converts a thousand times better.

It would also be a cool way for clubs or pubs looking for a DJ to listen to some of the music and mixes they have produced. Of course for a section like this too work you need a lot of traffic to gain the interest but as you said it's a long term project and I'm sure you will get there or you would'nt have all the spare time

Thanks again!

I do have a system in place for that called 'Bedroom mixes'. The main push I actually want to give it is that it's a place for people to share their own stuff and I want the production side of the forum to really shine. There is a local shop that sells just vinyl in my nearby city so I was going to run a competition monthly to win 3 promo vinyls as he get's them before they come out from the music labels.

I love the idea of the clubbing side of things... This could be a really good way to get people from their bedroom into a club. LOVE it.

It depends on how you go about it, so your telling me that the same person is going to go through all 100 threads because is the only way they will tell. I have done this before and it worked fab so I am talking from experience if you could please state how you came to the conclusion that it was terrible advice that would be great.

@Mike, thank you for the advice mate.

In regards to making your own accounts, there is two sides to this coin.

1. It WILL generate content to start you off.
2. They aren't ACTUALLY real people.

I'm currently going to other forums to post and link through with a signature.

Thanks again Mike.

Thanks for quoting me too, ha. I've just never ran a forum. The reason I'm more biased towards not creating any fake accounts in the same reason that paying for members is a complete deadend idea... - It's not a real a community.

Like I said, for now I'm going to other places online to tell people about it. It's something to work on in the spare time I get from my real work.

Your words were very encouraging and your right. I want to create a unique place for people to really grow their skills and capabilities as an artist as well as socialize with fellow enthusiasts.

Thank you.

Yep, I know... all you needed was the confidence that you are moving in the right direction.

It sounds like a golden idea... I would steal it, except that in my city the vast majority of the "underground" music fans are into rap and hip-hop, which I cannot stand...

I want to move back to Austin...

I play bass and wanted to say I think your idea is great!

Funkynassau in Canada

I would suggest you get someone from fiverr (by top rating) to get all the seo work done for you,fiverr can be a fantastic site for allmost anything,i use it all the time ,you can even get people to posts comments to other music related sites and even other forums very cheap

Hey guys,

Thought I'd just update you that we are now at 55 members and about to hit our 500th post!

I'm purely been marketing through Soundcloud alone and actually haven't even started ranking in Google yet. - Something which is baffling me currently.

Cool, that's great for you, Man. What is Soundcloud? How does it work?

(I know I could Google it, but wanted to hear from you.)

Hey Ant, have you looked at vBSEO? It's an SEO plugin for vBulletin that has claimed to help a lot of people improve the Google rankings of their forums.

Just to give perspective...

I launched my Start-up with Yahoo Groups.
It's jobsite for my college.

It will in time, generate an income from adsense and advertisements. But honestly, music is one of my greatest passions and I earn enough with my career to just do this for a nice hobby. It's almost a meditation.

The forum has had an amazing response and we've had some incredible Artist's promoted through us now via Youtube and that is also picking up nicely.

Thanks for all the advice guys.

Ant