The Reverend
Paragon
Hello everyone! This one is a long one so tough it out :yes:
The following is a complete guide to promoting your forum, you will find little tips similar to the ones in this thread around this fora but i will hopefully make it easier to understand.
FYI, If you are an experienced admin, you might want to skip the first section.
Right, lets get cracking:
Intro to Promotion
There are many different ways to promote your forum. Back in the early days of forums, most promotion was done by word of mouth, nowadays it is much easier to promote your forum- so consider yourself lucky if you are a relatively new admin :great: . Personally, i like to use forum promotion sites to promote my forum. A lot of people also use this method, but you will probably want to know other methods of promotion.
Common mistakes
So, you've started a forum? well here are some things not to do when promoting your forum:
DO NOT:
Spam- Spamming links to your forum on other peoples forums will not do any favours for your forum's reputation, nor your own.
Encourage members that are not interested in your niche to sign up to your forum- Now, when i say that, i do not mean stop them from registering altogether, i mean just dont encourage them with all your heart to sign up- as that leads to way too many posts in the general chat area of your forum (if you have one)
Using Social Networks To Promote Your Forum
Facebook, twitter and any other social networks are a godsend when it comes to forum promotion- Heres how to use them to your advantage:
Facebook
1.Create a page for your forum with the title of the page as the name of your forum (obviously!)
2.Ask your Facebook friends to like the page and spread the word to their friends, then hopefully their friends will spread the word to their friends and so on...
3.Encourage people to comment on your Facebook page by posting questions, for example (if your site is a gaming forum):
What game did you just play?
john smith: bla bla bla
sarah smith: bla bla bla
4. Regularly update your page with updates from your forum, so as to keep "likers" interested, also, have a link to the forum in each of those updates.
Twitter
Promoting your site is very easy:
1. Create an account for your forum
2.Get people to follow you (obviously) using the same method as number 2 in the facebook section but with followers 🙂
3. Regularly tweet updates about your forum with links
Using Promotion sites to your advantage
This is pretty straightforward, make a thread in the promotion section (which every forum promotion site should have) and bump it as regularly as you can (a lot of sites have a time limit- FP's is 24 hours for people with more than 10 posts).
Using ordinary forums to your advantage
Now, obviously spam is not allowed on pretty much all forums, but signature links are normally allowed, use a normal font size as massive links can be very annoying to some members, and it will not make you any friends. Also, do not pester people to join your forum, firstly this is considered as spam by some people and using the pm service to do this is considered as breaking the forum's ToS on most forums and can lead to you being pm restricted- or worse.
Spreading your userbase
Promotion can also be useful for bigger forums if they are tired of having members coming from the same place and thinking the same things, this is where the miracle of search engines comes into play, have a search on google foru mpromotion forums. Then find a relatively small one, promote your site there as members of small forums will be constantly looking for new content and threads to post in. Whilst this method (my special method :yes: ) will only get your thread viewed by a few people, those people will be more likely to sign up. On larger promotion forums, people seem to pay less attention to the promotion section.
I hope my guide helped you, i will be constantly updating it 🙂
Please comment and leave suggestions for things to add.
Thanks for reading,
The Reverend (formerly profx)
The following is a complete guide to promoting your forum, you will find little tips similar to the ones in this thread around this fora but i will hopefully make it easier to understand.
FYI, If you are an experienced admin, you might want to skip the first section.
Right, lets get cracking:
Intro to Promotion
There are many different ways to promote your forum. Back in the early days of forums, most promotion was done by word of mouth, nowadays it is much easier to promote your forum- so consider yourself lucky if you are a relatively new admin :great: . Personally, i like to use forum promotion sites to promote my forum. A lot of people also use this method, but you will probably want to know other methods of promotion.
Common mistakes
So, you've started a forum? well here are some things not to do when promoting your forum:
DO NOT:
Spam- Spamming links to your forum on other peoples forums will not do any favours for your forum's reputation, nor your own.
Encourage members that are not interested in your niche to sign up to your forum- Now, when i say that, i do not mean stop them from registering altogether, i mean just dont encourage them with all your heart to sign up- as that leads to way too many posts in the general chat area of your forum (if you have one)
Using Social Networks To Promote Your Forum
Facebook, twitter and any other social networks are a godsend when it comes to forum promotion- Heres how to use them to your advantage:
1.Create a page for your forum with the title of the page as the name of your forum (obviously!)
2.Ask your Facebook friends to like the page and spread the word to their friends, then hopefully their friends will spread the word to their friends and so on...
3.Encourage people to comment on your Facebook page by posting questions, for example (if your site is a gaming forum):
What game did you just play?
john smith: bla bla bla
sarah smith: bla bla bla
4. Regularly update your page with updates from your forum, so as to keep "likers" interested, also, have a link to the forum in each of those updates.
Promoting your site is very easy:
1. Create an account for your forum
2.Get people to follow you (obviously) using the same method as number 2 in the facebook section but with followers 🙂
3. Regularly tweet updates about your forum with links
Using Promotion sites to your advantage
This is pretty straightforward, make a thread in the promotion section (which every forum promotion site should have) and bump it as regularly as you can (a lot of sites have a time limit- FP's is 24 hours for people with more than 10 posts).
Using ordinary forums to your advantage
Now, obviously spam is not allowed on pretty much all forums, but signature links are normally allowed, use a normal font size as massive links can be very annoying to some members, and it will not make you any friends. Also, do not pester people to join your forum, firstly this is considered as spam by some people and using the pm service to do this is considered as breaking the forum's ToS on most forums and can lead to you being pm restricted- or worse.
Spreading your userbase
Promotion can also be useful for bigger forums if they are tired of having members coming from the same place and thinking the same things, this is where the miracle of search engines comes into play, have a search on google foru mpromotion forums. Then find a relatively small one, promote your site there as members of small forums will be constantly looking for new content and threads to post in. Whilst this method (my special method :yes: ) will only get your thread viewed by a few people, those people will be more likely to sign up. On larger promotion forums, people seem to pay less attention to the promotion section.
I hope my guide helped you, i will be constantly updating it 🙂
Please comment and leave suggestions for things to add.
Thanks for reading,
The Reverend (formerly profx)
