Best ways to promote a forum?

If you can provide a place to discuss an article on a popular blog, that could well be a good start.

That is right. You can find the place that relates to your niche.

I know it sounds unethical but the BEST way is to hire fake posters to frequent the forum and post useful information, questions, and responses.

Hey, nobody wants to be the first one to enter a forum haha!

Forums are funny like that, you need to make them APPEAR big and authoritative before they actually will be big and authoritative.

~Dave

I started a forum from scratch 6 years ago now and I dont envy you at all its gonna be hard work but the results will be fantastic if it starts to take off :-)

The way I promoted mine was bought lots of domains relating to my forum and effectively created landing pages and SEO'd those pages and ranked them.....

For one search term I own every spot on google on the first 2 pages :-)

You could go posting on others forums and get to know a few of the members and bring it up casually via PM :-)

You need to make your forum attractive to the visitor to not only stay but to post as well...

We now lock our forums to guests so that they can only read one thread then it makes them register.... this seems to work very well as once someone has registered we have made it easy to post and reply to threads etc...

Make your forum look busy :-)

Not a year goes by that I dont get some sort of legal action against me due to my forum so be sure that you keep track of whats going on

Good luck

Danny

SEO is the most important IMO. Did you try social network promotion? That's another good way.

if you have been apart of forums for years.......and you are a internet marketer than the answer is rather simple

use your list...I will let your creative juices flow from there lol

I for one am launching my forum in june....my birthday as well as 1 yr anniversary for my blog

It will BE SLOW at first. Keep at it.
ADD NEW ENGAGING CONTENT EVERY SINGLE DAY! Keep at it.
Get a few friends to post on it at first to keep it looking fresh.
People want to post something and have someone else sees it and reply's right away so staying on top of the little traffic you have to keep them around it important. Keep at it.
I have never used a "cheap" writer to post or fake users, but I have contacted and paid or worked with other blog owners in my niche to write featured stories or articles and cross promote.Keep at it.
Those are the BASIC'S. I have much better ways to draw and engage users but that is a starting ground.

Whats your niche?

Same thing as promoting a product, every marketing method, just buy the niche .
And yes, i agree that its a hard one...
Good luck!

I found the Warrior Forum via a viral report that Allen Says wrote back in 1999. There's a GREAT lesson there.

Allen wrote this great viral report that talked about how to make money. He had laid out a simple, but effective system on how to do this. He also showed you how to make money by sharing the report with other people.

Inside the report he offered up a link to the Warrior Forum to learn more about marketing.

Of course, before you promote any forum you want to make sure you have some useful content in there so that when people visit, they will want to return. Some forums, when they first start out, will offer a free webinar / teleconference every week or bi-weekly, and then discuss the webinar in a thread and/or offer additional content in a thread relating to the webinar.

You've got to give people reasons for wanting to visit the forum and for reasons to return to the forum, so having fresh, valuable content is key. It's also important to recruit members to start participating in the forum, that includes you too. Make sure you are building a list and when you post new content, send them a reminder with a link back to your forum.

You'll want to strike a delicate balance between promoting your forum and coming out with new content. One of the biggest mistakes I see forum owners make is one of apathy. Once the members see the owner of the forum is no longer participating before the membership hits critical mass, then they'll stop coming back.

Critical mass is what this forum has. You'll notice it hit critical mass years ago when the members themselves created all the new content for it. Also members would spread the word about the forum in their own ebooks, reports, e-mails to their lists, on their blogs, and even in their own forums.

There really isn't a "best way" to promote a forum, what's important is that you are promoting it, consistently, in more than one way.

RoD

hello I am new here. Can I get list of consumer reviews sites. Actually I wanna post my reviews to different sites. Plz help me out

Dont go down the route of of your own views on a forum... that is like forum suicide :-) You need to stay impartial :-)

Simple Machines forum is what mine use to be run on, its good but was very restrictive and when I made the switch to vbulletin thats when I noticed a massive traffic increase and that is where the revenue comes in....

However there are big costs to running a busy forum and that is server costs for the first few years of mine I covered it but it got harder and it came close to me having to close the site because I could not justify it

But now the costs are still high but advertising revenue now pays for it and we are now a leading authority in our niche where companies come to launch new products and services so we also get a lot of freebies.

The reason why we get a lot of grief is that if a company does something bad like rips a member off then the forum slates them and thats when the defamation and libel come out. I am pretty good now at dealing with it and last year we made it on the news because we were being sued by a company that was scamming people then we turned the tables and the company had to close :-)

I worked hard to build my forum and I did a lot of things to get members that maybe seen as bad, but there are no friends in business and it can be quite cut throat, but you do what you can to be successful.

I will never start another forum again and I will be selling mine in a few years once I have completed what i want to achieve, it may be worth less then but thats a risk I am willing to take.

Make sure you have a clear direction for your forum and make sure you try to keep your visitors engaged and it will then grow.

Also when i started my forum there were quite a few others in the same niche its just that I was doing it better :-)

Facebook ads, ppc, and not to mention other forums.
Forums are very hard to build, only the best last.

Facebook ads would probally be very good though if you can target it down specifically to your niche.

other forums are your best bet. that can reach people quicker.

But do not make your forum seem like a ghost town, that will kill it instantly.

There are many ways to promote you forum:-

Follow this Some Promotional Techniques

Sending an email to all your friends
Posting updates on Facebook or Myspace
Using Twitter.com to reach out to new people
Posting on Forum, Blogs
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Submitting articles to article directories
Posting on Yahoo Answers
Social Bookmarking on sites like
By advertising on Google's adwords
Using Widgets to promote your forum on your personal website and social networking profiles

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This has been covered a million times already on this forum. Did you do a search?

Again, BUILD A LIST, then launch your forum.

And listen to Mike, posting fake threads with fake members is RIDICULOUS.

I owned a very popular forum back a few years ago.

Here's what I did and didn't do...

1. I didn't fret about getting traffic. I just wanted to have a place to post my thoughts, help marketers (yes it was in the IM niche) who needed free tips and tricks, have a place to discuss different POVs with like-minded and opposing-minded marketers, learn from others' thoughts and experiences and ultimately attract people to my side of the web where I would eventually build relationships with them that could in turn yield profits later. I also primarily wanted to BIC--BE IN CHARGE of my own online hang out/community, set the rules you know that sort thing--the entrepreneur spirit was strong in me.

2. I had a co-admin, my business partner at the time so I didn't have to go it alone, it can be boring and stressful being all on your lonesome, so when I didn't answer to posts, she would and sometimes she would refer posts specifically to me to answer and vice versa. I also had other moderators but that was just a secondary effect though it helped to bring them in a lot more regularly I presume--I can only presume cos I never tracked the effect of having multiple moderators except to say it's not always necessary. 2 dedicated admins should do just fine at least in the beginning.

3. I didn't start with MULTIPLE forums in one forum. This is a grave mistake I have made in the past (after my first forum and first success), forum owners tend to think creating many forums allows for people to target their posts better and that's true (after you have built a BUSY forum!) When you start with 5-10 forums in one, some will look scanty and that will make your whole forum look scanty. Start with one general board and don't call it general lol... Just start with your own posts and let others post whatever they want. People will get in on the discussions and things should flow from there.

4. Your posts should be natural discussion attractors and starters. Don't go overboard with anything. Just post thoughts that you would say if you were in a room full of people with like interests and you wanted to start a conversation or lead the conversations as the case may be. I can't tell you what to post because then that would be unnatural Just be yourself. Talk. Say what's on your mind. Don't be shocked this will attract others who need a forum where they can speak their minds too and on it will go, hopefully.

5. Participate in other people's forums where your target audience spends time, build a list of those people by giving away great content in your posts and attaching more great give aways to your signature file. After a couple of weeks on your list, let members know about your own forum. This isn't poaching, it's simply using what you have to get where you want. I don't remember (sadly) how I attracted such large numbers but this may have been one of the primary techniques. I also wrote free viral reports and ebooks a lot so I'm sure those helped attract posters. I also mentioned my forum in every report, article resource box and everywhere I could that didn't infringe on anyone's space. I didn't pay to advertise my forum. Just never needed to.

Hope those tips help.

Cheers,

Kunle

I think the best place to promote a forum is in other forums! And PPC can do well also, but you will need to populate the forum and make it look active or people will not join and participate in the convos

Ricky

I didnt have a list....

I do now though :-)

no chance :-)

I dont want to start another forum.... I have my hands full taking this one to the top :-)

Danny

It will require SEO and/or some sort of targeted traffic. Good sorts of targeted traffic are fb pages, youtube videos and forum exchange services.

Have you tried PRWeb? A compact and relevant press release can work wonders, offering something new, boosting traffic and getting the backlinks.

They offer a service with a very wide reach, including news sites, blogs, and RSS feeds.

SEO indeed and i thing you need Service Thread to boosting the traffik, because people always try to find cheap place to outsource their projek, example WSO. Hey, i come here because that Warrior Spesial Offer hahaha...

SEO is still important to promote your site.

Good SEO, great content and if you can have lots of users who communicate on regular basis can lead to success in running forums

Sorry, I remembered it wrong. It was Steve Pavlina who shut down his forum. Here is the link to his article about it.

Shutting Down the Forums

A short quote from that article.

And here is the forum topic about it.

Shutting Down the Forums (Blog)

Expecting Google or any other search engine to feed people to you just is not going to happen

Therefore it is hard work, ideally you need three or four helpers who will post items, and reply to them, in my experience an article that has had a few visitors will get more, an article showing only one or two visitors often never takes off

There should be some community of interest that you can address and use other means, word of mouth, advertising emails (be sure to stay withing the spam regulations for your country) and get the people to visit.

Be prepared to ensure that when they post they get replies, and good replies, preferably from more than one person.
I have set up many forums for myself and for friends/clients, some take off some just die

You have to reach that intertia point quickly where the forum is self sustaining.
You have to think what is the purpose of your fourm and why they would want to join your forum, then find a way to target that audience with the information it is available.

Don't expect everyone to be active, there are more passive observers to a forum than there are active contributors. Typically you will only get a few % of your joined up subscribers actually making any contribution.

In sort a lot of hard work is needed to get it moving, go out and find those first few contributors that will act as the core to get things moving. You can try and do it on your own using several user names, but that is not easy and many would frown on it.

You can promote forum on other forums which is in same keyword. Basically forum needs lots of article to promote. Also you need some unique articles.
What I do, post an article with new registration, add some members and comment to your previous post.

Offer something that people can't find in other places. You'll get traffic, guaranteed!

Search out what your target audience is looking for. Visit relevant forums for that.

E.g. some black hat forums do well from the start because they provide software and information products that pirates cannot find on the internet.

The best way would be doing paid advertising like PPC.

that is very simple way to promote your forum by posting your forum different kind of article site like reddit, my space,chronicle,joomla etc.

Let it grow Make it unique and the flock will follow it, make it worth their time.

There is nothing special about forums, you need to create content first and then you need to drive traffic. It is very hard work, much like everything else.

viral marketing, word of mouth, and PPC to get the ball rolling.

Youtube vidoes would help too, i think facebook video ads, also as you can target and define the people you want in your forum posting, and their interests.

I helped a client go from 0 members to swarming with 4000+ members in a month doing this.

with a bit of testing we worked out what work, and what marketing did not resonate and just threw out the stuff not sticking, and upscaled the winners.