Any ideas on how to drive traffic to a new forum?

[wmakara]

Hi All,

I have a baby/parenting website which not only is a store but also a resources center for parents.

I have added a forum onto it but as I haven't promoted my site very much I don't have many visitors (except spam registrations).

Any ideas on how I can drive people to use my forum?

Thanks
Wendy

[tim_buchalka]

Hi Wendy,

Why not use the power of web 2.0 sites like squidoo, hubpages, wordpress.com, etc.

Google sees these sites as authoritative which means they rank really well, and you could just link from there to your forum.

Over time this will help your forum rank well by itself in the search engines, and in the short term you will be able to get some traffic from the web 2.0 sites.

You should do some keyword research first though and pick some long tail keywords with some traffic to get rolling.

Hopefully this helps a little.

Cheers



Tim

[p2y]

The best way to build a forum fast is through yahoo groups, but you have to do it the right way. The best approach is to join yahoo groups on the topic of your forum and post your articles/tips there instead of a place like ezinearticles. If you give them valuable content, they'll go checkout your forum.

[Marty S]

Hey Wendy. I do have a successful forum in the VERY competitive poker market. Although I started it to support my other websites, it certainly has built a life of its own. Although an active forum will be found by the search engines all on its own, here are some suggestions to help make that forum active:

1- Provide valuable quips of information/topics on your subject. If you don't know what that means try doing a Google search for hot topics, then start threads in your own forum very much related to the issue.

2- Incorporate your help section or product information into the forum headings. This will not only save you time, but will soon attract surfers looking for that exact information.

3- When you or someone else in your forum posts pertinent content, rework it into an article and submit it to ezinearticles.com and then link the article back to your forum (topics/thread) using specific key words. If they submitted it in your forum, then consider it your property.

4- Start a blog at blogger (or elsewhere) that reiterates your knowledge in the topic and points back to the forum (topics/threads) using the forums own re-worked content. Google owns blogger, therefore Google loves blogger!

5- Start threads by asking something controversial, or comparing products. "Do you like this productX or this productY and tell us why you think it's better. Or does anyone own productZ, I am thinking of buying it, would like to know.

6- Everyone watches YouTube. Go there and do a search for your product/topic and find the most controversial, or popular videos. Post the link to that video at the start of a thread and just start writing opinions about it. If it's popular on youtube, it can be popular on your forum.

7- As the owner/moderator of a forum you should read over any quality content submitted by others. If they use specific key words in their submissions, go into the comment edit mode and bold or italicize those key words. Once or twice a day is fine to not over do it. Crawlers give extra attention to relevant keywords that are emphasized.

8- Don't spread your forum topics thin. Start with no more than 4 major subjects - the less the better. The first thing surfers to a forum look at is the number of posts, so keep as many posts under one topic - divide later when you get busier.

9- Invite 2 or 3 moderators you have come to know as knowledgeable in this field - amongst your customers perhaps. People really like being asked to be a moderator and they can help inject initial conversations and debates. I reward my moderators (and frequent contributors) with free software, writing work, or cold cash once or twice a year as well.

Most of all be patient, but be persistent. When I started my poker forum almost 2 years ago, it was just me and 2 other moderators I personally invited to help, exchanging a few ideas. Very slow to start but now we have about 32,000 posts and over 1,000 contributors.

Wendy, you have a good topic and the kind of audience that will actually be seeking out help and advice, I think a forum is a good idea for you.

Hope that helps and best of luck.

[wmakara]

Thanks guys,

If I start a thread in my own forum, should I also register under a few names and reply so it appears there are a few people at least on my forum?

Also, if I don't have any posts yet, how can I use Yahoo Groups to link back to my forum?

I've joined a number of Yahoo/Google Groups related to Moms and all I've noticed is not much chatting but heaps of advertisements about one thing or another that isn't even related to the group.

How do you get around this?

Cheers
Wendy

[underdogaffiliate]

just to add on...

try Yahoo Answers...

register a few account (Under different IP if you can...) and create a controversy on a hot topic related to your niche.. then after a few questions and answers back and forth, link back to your forum...

you could also outsource for people to populate your forum, create forum posts, etc..

of course the above 2 suggestions are a little sneaky... but it brings me traffic

[Allegro]

buy forum posters at digitalpoint, 10 posts go for $1-2

[Marty S]

Originally Posted by wmakara

Thanks guys,

If I start a thread in my own forum, should I also register under a few names and reply so it appears there are a few people at least on my forum?

No, that is lame. However if you post some of your articles/product reviews just ask your new moderators to go in and comment - you can possibly return the favor to them if they have a website as well by commenting on thier blog or video.

[MemberWing]

Marty, thank you for very valuable tips.

I am looking to open 2-3 forums soon and it's very important to do things right.

Which forum software you use?
I think the trend is toward vBulletin with SEO pack?

Gleb

[Marty S]

YW. I think thats what I use, although with some additional features installed I hired someone to do it right. I am currently considering upgrading now.

2 to 3 forums though... wow. Thats a handful.

[WilliamM]

I wish you the best. I heard that forums require a lot of time to maintain. I'll be looking forward to hearing about your experience.

[MemberWing]

I am technical person - I do have eager content writers and social people to work on contents and connection with audience though.
But I am very serious about properly SEO-ing forum portal.
It would be extremely hard to "fix" any mistakes later on.

Gleb

[Takuya Hikichi]

Contact Carrie at Inb0x.Com > Home and she hires ghost forum posters all day long. That's all she does.

[cgj1981]

Thanks for all this info....when I get back to forums, I want to try a couple of these suggestions out.

[Samuel Lee]

Web 2.0 is a great start definitely! Google views these particular sites as popular and with authority so that translates into higher search engine rankings, so you can basically just link directly from there to your forum and start getting some good traffic in the short term. Over a longer period of time this will also put your forum in the higher ranks on the search engine results and get some good indexing for your site. Probably the best place to start is the Google keyword research tool and then choose some long tail keywords, specific to your niche to get the ball rolling. Hope this helps!