Running a forum can take a lot of time - it can even become a full time job. Promoting your forum is one of the things a lot of admins either forget or find hard to do. In this article I will highlight some hopefully useful tips and suggestions which I’ve used to promote my webmaster forum, sWG.
Forum promotion forums
This one is pretty obvious but it’s surprising how many forum admins aren’t aware such places exist. These forums are the perfect place to start promoting any type of forum. They offer various services such as banner promotion, SEO services, text adverts and the such. Such services are often offered for free in return for forum posts. They are also a great place to meet and chat with other forum admins. I personally use:
Contests
If you have some money spare you could invest it in a good prize for a contest or compeition. I’ve found these often perform much better than paid text or banner adverts for forums. Contests however should be varied and interesting - be sure that the prize fits the genre of your forum! You shouldn’t forget to promote the contest though! Send an email to your current members, post it on similar forums, forum promotion forums, everywhere! Some ideas for a contest could include a photoshopping contest, posting contests, referral competition, a quiz, treasure hunt or anything.
Be creative
There are hundreds of forums on the internet - so what makes yours better than others of the same type? If you can’t answer this question then you should really be looking how to make your website stand out from the crowd. It could be how you treat your guests, how the forum is administrated, the design of the forum or a feature not available anywhere else.
Ignite discussion
Don’t sit back and hope for members to start discussions. The case in most forums is that the majority of the threads are started by a small percentage of the members. Start (on topic) threads daily - let your members know the latest news in your genre, the latest updates to the forum or just ask them their favourite food. Whatever it may be you shouldn’t expect threads to be created because you have members.
Keep your current members
This is something I’ve seen happen to far too many forums to name - the admin becomes so focused on attracting new members to their forum that they forget their current members! You should keep member’s needs in mind - ask them what they want to see, respond to their feedback and keep them interested. Send our regular email updates to members to attract back those who may have forgotten about your forum and to keep members updated with the latest goings on.
Don’t expect users to come to you
This one is especially for new forums and also new websites. A lot of people will create a website or forum and then have no idea why they aren’t getting visitors and members. If users won’t come to you, you should go to them! Visit similar forums and post about your website. Look for related websites and ask them to exchange links. Get involved with your genre - if you’re admin of a movie forum, for example, write some reviews of movies you’ve seen and submit them to review sites like IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes and of course - your own forum!
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