How to promote a Forum

I'd also be very interested in seeing the responses to this.

Make your forum your homepage. Drive all traffic to it from EVERYWHERE. Include free incentives for joining your forum.

It's a catch 22. A forum has to start from somewhere, but the people who visit your forum will see that it's not active, so they dont want to belong to it. You may have to do some artificial posts to get things moving.

Paying people to post on your forum can give it the headstart it needs.

Hire some article writers to post interesting topics on your forum.

You can get forum posters of average quality for about $0.10 per post to respond to these threads.

Here is a blackhat tip

Most visitors to forums will not post unless the forum is active. So you can create 10-20 different profiles and post as each of them. People like fighting with trolls on forums,, so have a pretend internet fight with one another

Will PM you my email address so you can reply, sorry.

Paying a few forum posters is a good idea, there are freelancers who are doing quality forum posts. You can try Hire a warrior section, there might be some warriors interested.

I have a similar problem. I just started a new forum for one of my sites a few days ago, but now need content. I may be willing to pay the right person if it's affordable.

If you're using Vbulletin, try installing VBSEO so you can get search engine traffic. You may want to outsource forum posters to post QUESTIONS and other posters will post ANSWERS

you can promote forum
begin social networking,. like facebook, twitter or pinterest
i hope my answer helpfull

Getting traffic to your website takes a hardwork, you must advertise that way people will find your website. Submit your website to as many search engines as you can. This is one way to start getting traffic for your website.

SEO may not the best way to get people to your forums.
Most forums are targeted to a niche. So you need to advertise on the sites those people visit (i.e. related sites). You also can participate in other forums of the same niche and put your URL in your signature. You should get a steady stream of new visitors if you participate regularly and make intelligent and helpful posts.

Some of this has been said, but....
At first you should do two things.
#1 - Hire someone to post HIGH QUALITY posts. Specifically something controversial to try to get people talking.
#2 - Hold a contest for any members you do already have on both recruiting members and making non-spam posts.

For the first 3-6 months it is hard to keep a forum going, but after that it is much more natural.

Hope that helps.

Michael

Hey there! I've got 3 ideas for you:

1) free incentives
2) Free Incentives
3 FREE INCENTIVES!

Offer an e-book or two in regards to members registering for your forum. Message boards are fantastic particularly for monetizing because of the endless possibilities - e.g. affiliate marketing, banner ads, premium subscriptions, etc. It's tough to get started but due to the content and SE indexing the business runs smoothly once it's off the ground.

If you can get some interesting conversations going.. it can be a fun time too!

Best of luck and be sure to keep us all updated on your progress.

Best Wishes,
-- Alanis

Add the forum to an existing traffic base. It's pretty much impossible getting a new forum with no traffic off the ground.

I'm starting a forum as well, but it's neighborhood centric so I cannot fake any profiles or have outsourced help. It will be groups of 50-500 w/ their own forums talking about neighborhood specific issues. I guess I'll have to start relevant topics such as lost/found, activities, babysitting co-op, group buys, consumer recommendations on products/services etc...and hope people start contributing.

It's trying to sell the first fax machine or cell phone, what good is it if nobody else uses one! haha

Any other ideas for this specific situation of how to kick off a neighborhood forum?

Develop a portal/content website and start getting organic traffic. Once you do that, you can then funnel the traffic to the forum from the navigation, articles, etc.

To be honest, starting a forum is one of the most difficult online business to make profitable. It is very important to pick your strategies carefully, patiently and consistently.

I will just give you what is on my head right now regardless of my awareness of your niche.

1. You need a budget like it or not.
2. You need traffic and think targeted traffic, go after it wherever it is.
3. Lots of niches are saturated and almost impossible to break even, finding a large niche with little competiton has become necessary.
4. Opt in for Google adword, it's a great opportunity to get seen all around the web.
5. Find a handful of big sites related to your niche that sells ads space and take advantage of it.
6. Try to do SEO and rank for your target keywords.
7. When the money start rolling in, start an attractive kind of incentive.
8. Get experiences and good moddys.
9. Don't neglect the offline world, classified, niche related places/officies, flyers, magazines e.t.c.
10. Good forum design, color and user friendly.

If you can maintain good number of sign up daily and activity I believe you are going to fly.

Simply create something attractive or compelling to participate. Good how-to guides after registering, contests, etc. Then promote is as much as you can in any area possible.

This question seems to come up quite often.

Bottom line....you're doing it backwards.

You build a LIST, then start your forum.

Its much easier to launch a forum with a list of subscribers that are all interested in the same subject matter, than it is to launch a forum, then scramble to find members.