What ways do you feel are the best way to attract new members to your site? Do you think advertising is the best way? Advertising may help attract them to your site, but does it make them members?
From my own personal opinion, on top of advertising, I think one of these most important factors in attracting guests to turn into members is by having a good custom skin. I know that in 2009-2010, when this FP theme was put into action, it was probably heavily contributed to attracting new users. I imagine it is one of the best tools to such.
I'd love to hear some of everyone's success stories on how they successfully built a solid member base.
I feel that social media is definitely one of the top ways to attract users. Pretty much everyone uses Facebook so if you post quality content and then post it on your Facebook page people are more likely to see it in their feeds and when they like or comment all of their friends will see the page and maybe check out your site. I haven't built up a huge fan base myself yet but I am seeing my Facebook page likes increase every day.
Touching on what you said QJ, I think a skin is most certainly a good tool to get members. I have gone to forums when browsing the Internet and found some really gaudy skins and I just hit the "back" button because I don't want to look at the forum anymore. When you make a theme, make everything flow, colors and content both.
Ensure your site looks & feels unique. Too many sites in the same niche look the same... If you add your own personality to the site, you'll attract more attention.
You only have a short time to catch your visitor's attention before they go elsewhere! You need to tell them what your site's about in the first few seconds. Use images to good effect!
Have a strong call to action on your sign up box! Make sure your message is strong & prominent as to why they should sign up to your site in particular.
Give your site a 'human face'..Have your own profile available with full information about how members can contact you. Having your own profile with a face & name give your site a personalized feeling & will invite members to sign up
I think there is no singular best way to attract users.
You have to use a combination of things or else you might as well give up.
Firstly, you need to make a good impression.
Your site has to at least be legible. Guests need to be able to read your site or else they will not stick around. That means you need a decent sized font (at least 10px) and it can't be one of those overly fancy (but difficult to read) fonts like Georgia. The contrast between background colours and text/link colours also has to be good. (So if you have a black background then you don't use a dark grey text/font. It's incredibly difficult to read at best.)
Try to avoid the same, often overused, themes. They might look nice, but so many others have them also that it doesn't make your site look unique or different at all.
Go for custom themes when you can because it sets your site apart from others (making it more memorable and thus users are more likely to return to it or at least remember they've visited it).
Secondly you have to have content that is visible and worth their time.
If guests can't see any content because your sections are restricted or empty, they aren't going to bother sticking around. You haven't shown them anything interesting or worth their time.
Furthermore, topics have to be more than generic "what is your favourite <thing>" because they're so easy to make and most guests do not care about that kind of fluff at all.
Thirdly, you need to advertise.
Social networks can help but they are not the be-all/end-all solution. It can take a very long time to build up a decent group of followers on the social network before you see users clicking over to your site.
So you need to rely on other options like directories or promotion sites like FP. But again, don't rely on FP or sites like it exclusively.
While FP is a decent place to promote a site, it's function is fundamentally flawed. You are promoting your site to other admins who, in most cases, don't care about your site and have no interest in joining.
Or if you're a promotion site yourself (which a lot of people will join) then you only end up with the game group from FP on your site and no new users.
You need to be open to trying new ways to advertise. Things like business cards or maybe get a t-shirt with your site's logo and url on it.
You may hear about paid advertising, but unless you're prepared to spend multiple hundreds to thousands of dollars you really won't see much benefit from it and you'd be better served to save your money and try other measures.
Fourthly, persistence.
You need to keep making new content and advertising.
The work does not stop after you've filled a few forums with topics. You should have fresh posts at least every other day. Even if you're the only one posting. I mean if you make a forum and then just expect others to do all the work for you then your forum will fail.
And you need to stick to advertising, it may be boring or difficult or dull, but you need to do it.
If you can't stick to posting/advertising for any length of time then your site isn't likely to do very well. So you might as well save yourself the time and effort and not bother starting one/another one in the first place.
Fifthly, realistic expectations.
(Although this kind of ties into my previous point, I'm going to make this separate just to emphasize it on it's own.)
I will also point out that it is extremely unlikely that you will get more than 20 members in your forum's first few months. (Without using post exchanges and post packs.)
And you likely won't get massive numbers of posts without a lot of work either. (So don't expect to open a forum then a week later to have 3000 posts.)
And just because this is a notion that sometimes crops up on FP or other sites that deal in monetization...
Your forum, in all likelihood, is not going to be making you a ton of money either so don't go into this thinking about how much money you'll make. Because if you go trying to make a ton of money by putting ads everywhere you'll only end up scaring off guests and cause your site to crash itself.
Also don't presume that just because you have a site that you can immediately get staff for it. Getting useful staff is one of the most difficult things to do. Good staff are rare and difficult to find.
A lot of people who want to be staff are only in it for the "glory" of the title and don't actually want to do anything. Others will claim to help but won't do much at all and will flake off instead.
Not to mention the fact that a lot of people who are looking to become staff only want to be staff on large and already established forums. They don't want to put the work into helping a forum grow, they just want to pick up once that's been done.
I think VirusZero hit the nail on the head with that one. Mostly with this one line - "You need to keep making new content and advertising.". Constantly make new content, then while in between new content creation try to advertise some. Either by social media, promotion forums, or any type of outlet that is free for you. Resort to paid advertisement last.
I agree with the point about having a good look to the boards, when im surfing the web i like looking at nice things, if a board looks like its been rushed or i dont agree with the theme ill move on, chances are if its a nice skin im likley to stick around.
You could do a giveaway, join other forums in your niche, and put a link to the giveaway in your sig. I find that people are willing to join sites to get free stuff.
The main problem with contests is that they might cause a very sudden short burst of activity then nothing whatsoever once the contest is over. The free things are gone, people move on. Unless you have a solid core userbase to sustain the site post-contest, any contests you run aren't going to do much to inspire people to really stick around.
And running multiple contests can cause financial strain (if you have to keep buying prizes to give out and shipping them).
Not to mention that even with the premise of a contest people still get tired of them.
Plus if you have a core memberbase, too many contests (especially if they aren't winning at all and/or it seems like random people who show up only for the contests are) may cause them to become disinterested in both the contests and the forum in general. (Since to them it may seem like you're trying to buy popularity and maybe are playing favourites.)
Personally, contests and giveaways should not be the first thing an admin considers (especially for a fledgling site). Again it comes down to the fact that it looks like that admin is just trying to buy popularity. (Or basically not willing to really put the work to grow the site and instead wants to take a supposed quick way.)
I have a custom skin for my site and yes, I attract members to the site. SO having a custom skin that flows and looks good will attract guest and maybe some members.
However, most people will only join if they "need" too. Yes some people might join to check out the community but the majority are only going to join if they are looking for content that's on your board.
So to conclude, you will need a good custom skin AND unique content on your site or people will either join and not come back or not join at all.
Cookies, Pizza, Soda, anything free and edible. Oh, forums?
I think VirusZero knocked it out of the park. Using pre made themes, despite their appearances, will get you nowhere, promote in different places. As much as I love FP, you're not going to get anywhere if you're depending on FP, or any other promotion site, for all your promotion needs. Spread the word about your forum, go on different forums and promote your site, sticking to just one or two sites will eventually kill any motivation you have at keeping up with your site.
Oh, and if all your content is hidden from guests, you might as well pack up. Hiding all the goods does not get you anywhere. :lol:
