1. Exchanges
Exchange posts, registers, etc with other members. About 7% stay (in my personal experience 😛).
2. Packages
Filling up your forum, and making it easier for other members to post. Remember to post lots of topics with post friendly topics, e.g "What consoles do you own?" and "What's the weather like?"
3. Design
Make sure you have the perfect design. Ask other members on other forums what they think of your forum, or request some reviews to resolve the problem. Make sure your forum has a bit of bright/clean colour, so it's easy on the eyes.
One good trick, is to get some of your real life good friends on the board, that way you will get activity. And as we all know activity always attracts more activity, make sure you and your friends stick to it for a while, and you should start to see activity, if you combine it with good advertising.
One thing that I seriously stress is patience. If your forum is brand new, don't expect it to go seriously active overnight. Forums take time, effort and a lot of patience to make them successful.
Okay, I just took a good look around your forum and I have plenty of things to say about it.
First off, while I like the skin you guys are using, I don't like how dark it is. I would recommend finding a lighter skin, or even have the dark theme as the default and then a lighter theme as a second option, perhaps?
Secondly, you have way too many sections on your forums. Probably 10% of those don't have any posts in them at all, while others have confusing descriptions as to what that section is about. I would either delete some sections entirely, or else turn some sections into subforums or something of that nature because I looked around your forum and I was automatically overwhelemed by how many sections you have. If your forum is brand new, I wouldn't have that many sections at the start. I would start by having a select few sections, and work my way around those. Then, as the forum gets bigger and becomes more active, and if this gets more in demand, THEN you can add on a few more sections as you go along and as your site grows and gets more popular. Many members are turned off by forums that have a lot of sections to post in. They tend to get lost all too easily and might not know where to start, and I certainly didn't know where to start when I was looking around the forum!
Also, as Daisy has so rightly said, post exchanges, while not so much of a good idea for long term promotion, are probably your best friend in the short term. Request a few of those or look at other things that other members have to offer and go on with those. I don't request post exchanges anymore, I usually like to look out and see what other deals members are offering and go from there. Loads easier on my part.
A lot of people still use IE. If not the ideal browser you should still try and make it at least minimally compatible with it. Losing out on members from a technicality like that would be a shame.
A lot of people still use IE. If not the ideal browser you should still try and make it at least minimally compatible with it. Losing out on members from a technicality like that would be a shame.
Agreed. Some people have no choice but to use IE in the first place, and this would be because if they were at a library or a cafe and they probably only use IE as their choice of browser.
Have you invited a few friends to your board to form a core of members? I'd join a bunch of forums on the same topic and make a few more friends on those, and some may join your board. Plus you'll have some more cool friends 8)
Well, it sounds like you tried the word-of-mouth routine, and that is definetly a start. But I would promote at as many sites as possible if I were you. I know it doesn't sound like a good idea because you're seeing familiar faces as you go from one forum to the next, but it will do you wonders if you can request packages every once in a while, though, as this will help with activity and it won't seem like you are just sitting there with a dead forum.
