need help on old cooking forum

Afterburn25,

In your niche, Youtube looks like a good place to funnel traffic from. You can test this step by step plan:

STEP 01. Determine what people are looking for. Find relevant exact match niche keywords with significant local (your target areas and country/ies) and / or global monthly Google searches;

• Go to popular, heavily trafficked niche blogs, sites and Web forums to get more ideas of what your target audience is looking for;

• These exact match niche keywords / ideas would most likely be recipe names, "how to cook" / "how to prepare" and so on keywords that are relevant to your target audience...

STEP 02. Develop videos for those exact match niche keywords;

• For each video, create two versions, namely a "teaser" video version and a full video version; and

• Think of movie trailer video when you create "teaser" versions of your videos -- The main objective is for your "teaser" videos to be attention-grabbing, enticing and compelling for your target viewers. This is so after viewing your "teaser" videos -- Your target viewers'd most likely feel compelled to go to your forum to sign up and view the full versions of your videos...

STEP 03. Post your full videos in threads under relevant categories of your forum;

• Without negatively affecting the attention-grabbing, enticing and compelling attributes of your thread titles and descriptions -- Use your exact match niche keywords in your thread titles, descriptions and tags;

• Also integrate a function into your forum where non-members must register an account before they can view videos in your forum; and

• Integrate Bing remarketing and Facebook retargeting code into your forum pages, so you could in the future promote your forum in Facebook and Bing to people who have visited your forum but have yet to register an account...

STEP 04. Create a Youtube channel and a Facebook Fan page for your forum;

• Post your "teaser" videos in your Youtube channel;

• Without negatively affecting the attention-grabbing, enticing and compelling attributes of your video titles and descriptions -- Use your exact match niche keywords in your video titles and descriptions;

• Also use your exact match niche keywords in your video tags;

• Look for popular, trending and top viewed Youtube videos that are relevant to your target viewers. Take note of the tags of these videos and use these tags for your videos. Why? This will increase the chance of your videos to appear in the related videos sidebar of those popular, trending and top viewed videos;

• Include a compelling call to action in the enticing descriptions of your "trailer" videos in Youtube. These links should of course point to the full videos in the threads on your forum;

• Embed your "trailer" videos in your Facebook Fan page, along with your attention-grabbing, enticing and compelling titles, descriptions and call to action with links that point to the full videos in the threads of your forum...

STEP 05. Also offer a compelling material for your first time viewers, i.e. Something that'll make them register an account in your forum;

• This can be something like a free gift, i.e. A downloadable compilation of your full recipe videos. You can place an attention-grabbing banner in your forum that instantly communicates to first time viewers the benefits that they can get from registering an account in your forum...

STEP 06. Join Facebook groups that are relevant to your target audience. Participate in related discussions on these Facebook groups and in other social networks like relevant Facebook Fan pages, Web forums and blogs. Share your "trailer" recipe videos and full video threads in these social networks;

• The main objective is to establish your reputation across those online places as a friendly niche expert who runs a forum that provides relevant beneficial content...

STEP 07. Reach out to the owners / administrators / Webmasters of those Facebook groups, Facebook Fan pages and blogs for possible guest posting, ad banner and advert placements, mailing list ad placements and so on, which'd promote your free gift for the new members of your forum -- Since you'd be a familiar name to them owners / admins / Webmasters because of your frequent participation in their online properties, they'd most likely be more responsive to your offers...