I wrote this guide to try and help forum administrators find new ways to advertise their forums. Please give me constructive criticism on my writing and ideology.
This is the biggest hurdle an administrator of a new forum has to jump. This is Everest. Advertising your forums is never easy but is something that can be accomplished. Advertising your forum takes a lot of effort, and hard work. However, never listen to people who say advertising costs money. NEVER. Because there are so many very effective ways that you can bring traffic and members to your website without dipping into the retirement fund.
I must say, before you even release your forums - you need to ask some of your close friends to become a member and start posting. Because members do not want to go into an empty forum, they want to go into a populated and active environment that has a lot of posts that they can talk on. So I would recommend getting at least 2 friends to start posting a lot. If you can not do that, then your forums will be empty. So what you can do is sign up for a promotion forum and usually, they have a currency system they may call it 'Forum $'. You should post around and make your presence clear and earn some of the forum dollars. With these dollars pay people to make posts on your forums. For example:
"10 Posts for 100 F$ on sitename.com"
This actually works. Although those people won't come back to your forums, they kick start it! More on promotion forums below.
Promotion Forums
There are several ways to advertise your forums. Most of these can be done by actually using other forums. Before you start you may want to get a paragraph made about why people should join your forums. You want to make it short, and it must tell them why they should join your forums. Let them know what your forum offers but be very clear. You may want to add a graphic to your post as well.
Once you have something like the above, then you are ready to go. Now to hit some promotion forums. I have prepared a list of promotion sites, that are reliable and actually do work. I used them for my forums and in one month I had 100 members and 4,000 posts. By the way, for the list of promotion forums below, I am not using a referral system or anything - I am trying to help you and am not interested in profit.
Click here for the list of promotion forums, register on them and then read on.
Use that very detailed list to advertise your forums. Also, you may notice that I added a topsite in there. Well I would recommend signing up for that also, I guarantee that it helps - it is also ran by me.
When you are on the promotion forums, post around - make yourself known. I can guarantee that you can make a lot of good friends on there. You will get friends who can make you graphics fast and free, friends that will join your forums and be active just because they like you.
Directories, Link Exchanges & SEO
Another way to have your forums viewed is by submitting your forums into forum directories. This helps a lot. Some people go through a stage of looking for a new community if they do not like their other one. They use directories to find their new home. It's simple really, just submit your forums into the directory. Some directories make you link back to them and supply a link to the page that you linked them on. Just make a new page or something and put their link on it and then put that in. There is no point in having your forum bombarded with links and banners.
Click here to go to a list of directories kindly made by me.
SEO is also something that gives your forums a lot more exposure, and members. Even if it is in the long run. SEO Stands for Search Engine Optimization - Wikipedia will explain more. To increase SEO, submit your forums into search engines. Click here to submit your forums to google. Also key words are a big impact on search engine results. If you can make your forums have the thread name in the URL, then do it. If someone googles: "how to get rich". Your forums may have a topic called "how to get rich". So you should make sure that your forums do this:
http://www.yourforums.com/thread/how-to-get-rich
onstead of
Continue reading on ForumPromo ..
This is the biggest hurdle an administrator of a new forum has to jump. This is Everest. Advertising your forums is never easy but is something that can be accomplished. Advertising your forum takes a lot of effort, and hard work. However, never listen to people who say advertising costs money. NEVER. Because there are so many very effective ways that you can bring traffic and members to your website without dipping into the retirement fund.
I must say, before you even release your forums - you need to ask some of your close friends to become a member and start posting. Because members do not want to go into an empty forum, they want to go into a populated and active environment that has a lot of posts that they can talk on. So I would recommend getting at least 2 friends to start posting a lot. If you can not do that, then your forums will be empty. So what you can do is sign up for a promotion forum and usually, they have a currency system they may call it 'Forum $'. You should post around and make your presence clear and earn some of the forum dollars. With these dollars pay people to make posts on your forums. For example:
"10 Posts for 100 F$ on sitename.com"
This actually works. Although those people won't come back to your forums, they kick start it! More on promotion forums below.
Promotion Forums
There are several ways to advertise your forums. Most of these can be done by actually using other forums. Before you start you may want to get a paragraph made about why people should join your forums. You want to make it short, and it must tell them why they should join your forums. Let them know what your forum offers but be very clear. You may want to add a graphic to your post as well.
Once you have something like the above, then you are ready to go. Now to hit some promotion forums. I have prepared a list of promotion sites, that are reliable and actually do work. I used them for my forums and in one month I had 100 members and 4,000 posts. By the way, for the list of promotion forums below, I am not using a referral system or anything - I am trying to help you and am not interested in profit.
Click here for the list of promotion forums, register on them and then read on.
Use that very detailed list to advertise your forums. Also, you may notice that I added a topsite in there. Well I would recommend signing up for that also, I guarantee that it helps - it is also ran by me.
When you are on the promotion forums, post around - make yourself known. I can guarantee that you can make a lot of good friends on there. You will get friends who can make you graphics fast and free, friends that will join your forums and be active just because they like you.
Directories, Link Exchanges & SEO
Another way to have your forums viewed is by submitting your forums into forum directories. This helps a lot. Some people go through a stage of looking for a new community if they do not like their other one. They use directories to find their new home. It's simple really, just submit your forums into the directory. Some directories make you link back to them and supply a link to the page that you linked them on. Just make a new page or something and put their link on it and then put that in. There is no point in having your forum bombarded with links and banners.
Click here to go to a list of directories kindly made by me.
SEO is also something that gives your forums a lot more exposure, and members. Even if it is in the long run. SEO Stands for Search Engine Optimization - Wikipedia will explain more. To increase SEO, submit your forums into search engines. Click here to submit your forums to google. Also key words are a big impact on search engine results. If you can make your forums have the thread name in the URL, then do it. If someone googles: "how to get rich". Your forums may have a topic called "how to get rich". So you should make sure that your forums do this:
http://www.yourforums.com/thread/how-to-get-rich
onstead of
Continue reading on ForumPromo ..
