Advice for my forum?

[Kirk93]

www.confab-it.com

I'm pretty new to all of this; I don't think I'm doing too bad so far but there's certainly a lot of improvement to be made.

At the moment I'm focusing on content production and advertising, but do you guys/gals have any particular advice you could give me about my forum? I know that the whole "general discussion" niche is quite challenging but I thought it was worth a shot; thus far I've tried advertising on Facebook, Twitter, forum posts etc as well as adding us to directories, but it doesn't seem to be working as they don't generate new members.

Any tips? 🙂

 

[zoldos]

I checked out your forum and you don't seem to be doing too bad. It's not so much about new registrations, but more about if anyone is posting, and the quality of the posts. I say focus on that for now, and also see if your current active members can promote your forum.

It looks like a cool place so I think I'll register under zoldos. 🙂 Let me know if you are interested in any sort of post exchange with my forum!

 

[Kirk93]

Thanks mate. 🙂

Anyone got any advice? 🙂
Also, if someone's willing to answer, how long does it take roughly for search engines like Google to start bumping you up pages? We've got good meta keywords etc, is it just content we should be focusing on? Just kinda concerned as this is all new to me and I just want our site to be reasonably popular. 🙂

 

[zoldos]

Thanks mate. 🙂

😀

 

[Kirk93]

Still looking for assistance on this. 🙂

 

[Kevin X Dragon]

• Get a better theme, the on you are using is very similar to the default one that vBulletin provides.
• Delete the "Rules & Information" forum. Just have one global topic that covers everything in that forum.
• Try to cut down on the number of forum you have. You can combine some topic together, make a forum sub-forum, or just delete it. You can always add more as your community grows.

 

[Kirk93]

I did as you suggested; I'm asking for promotional advice though. 🙂
The only thing is, our own custom theme is in the works so I haven't got around to replacing it yet.

 

[Zlasarma]

How about trying this? viewtopic.php?f=22&t=103221

As you see there, I didn't try that but I will for sure. I mean, there is nothing to lose 🙂

 

[Kirk93]

I have actually tried it and had one or two people sign up as a result. Problem is, the amount of stuff I've wrote compared to any gain is absurd.

 

[Beverly]

I checked out your forum and you don't seem to be doing too bad. It's not so much about new registrations, but more about if anyone is posting, and the quality of the posts. I say focus on that for now, and also see if your current active members can promote your forum.

It looks like a cool place so I think I'll register under zoldos. 🙂 Let me know if you are interested in any sort of post exchange with my forum!

This idea worked for my forum. Don't focus on getting 100 members. Even just ten loyal members who come by daily and post a lot will help your forum grow. Then branch out, asking each member to please refer a good friend to the forum. Most general chat forum member signups come from personal recommendation rather than advertising.