Creating a forum - How do I get people to post?

9 replies
Hey warriors,

I just created a forum on my blog which gets decent traffic (500 to 1000 daily visitors). How do I get people to start threads on the forum? Maybe a broadcast or follow-up email to my list?

Best regards,
Mike Sheehan
#creating #forum #people #post
  • Profile picture of the author Neromancer
    One of the best ways to get people to post is to offer incentives to do so. Also you should share your posts with top people in your niche and ask them to repost your content on their site.

    Some bloggers do this for a fee. It is also a good idea to hire writers to post to your forum in every major topic to get other people involved. Good content will fins its way to the search engines and in time you will grow your forum.

    Finally you should launch your forum with a contest for the best article in each category and advertise the contest to free sites that are always looking for new freebies to promote.

    This is how some of my clients (ghosting) launched their forums.

    Originally Posted by gwpmike View Post

    Hey warriors,

    I just created a forum on my blog which gets decent traffic (500 to 1000 daily visitors). How do I get people to start threads on the forum? Maybe a broadcast or follow-up email to my list?

    Best regards,
    Mike Sheehan
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  • Profile picture of the author WillR
    If it's on your blog domain then why not think of some creative ways to get people to post. The problem is people need to register and unless given an incentive to do so, it will be hard to build that initial member base which is important as no one likes to visit or post on an empty forum.

    Why not make some of your next blog posts a little more interactive. Maybe have a contest with prizes or something like that whereby people must join the forum and submit their entry in a certain forum thread. You just need something that is going to give people a reason to register and join the forum. That's the hardest part.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alex Blades
    You might want to post some good topics to get people to comment. If you are stuck on what topics spark conversation, just go to top forums similar to yours and see what topics gets thousands of views and replies.
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  • Profile picture of the author vishwa
    Try to hire some person to post some quality threads to your brand new forum. If you can search in Google You will find some sites who are providing forum posting services at very affordable costs.
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  • Profile picture of the author naturaldry
    Are your forum boards nofollow or follow? What is the topic of the board?
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  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    Mike,
    Its always much easier to build a sizeable list of subscribers first, then launch a forum when they request it - rather than launching it cold and then trying to encourage people to post.

    As a suggestion, take your blog entries, and put them in the forum, and encourage users to begin a discussion based around your entries.

    It's going to be a long and quite possibly painful process, but if you stick with it - it *may* just work.

    Forums are always tough.
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  • Profile picture of the author TyBrown
    Cubepoints is a plug in that allows you to assign points for various actions including posting on a forum. You could give out prizes for most points earned.
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    • Profile picture of the author Michael T.
      Hmmmm....about 3 years ago I participated in forum creation...the forum was brand new and here is what the guys did to kick start their traffic....they had a 2 months contest and they offered prizes for the top 10 posters..the forum was highly active and they gained almost 10,000 members in the first 2 months.....just my 2 cents
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      Regards...Michael T.

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