Starting From Scratch

[OMDO]

I've opened up a couple of new forums, and I just don't know where to start in terms of getting people coming to a forum. I've spread the word to friends, but I'm really the only person in my friend group that is even into internet forums, hence a partial reason why I started one.

Outside of the obviousness of using this site, are there other steps that you took in terms of getting your forum off the ground? Was there anything that was helpful in going from just yourself and maybe a test account to someone else actively posting?

 

[Reverie]

Honestly, when I started forums 12 years ago.. I joined a few communities, I realized soon after a few were kind of linked together. They were made by the same software (Invisionfree) so then I went searching for more and different ones. Those same people sometimes did the same thing so I made friends with and stuck with those people for years. Now back in the day the community was more thriving and there were many forums to jump to and from. But now on Zetaboards we are one of the only alive General Chat forums (there are a few others of course) - but many of my friends I made throughout the years joined it and that's kind of how it worked for me.

So maybe whatever software you're on, go find other like communities and just post around! 🙂 Make friends with people. Have a link in your sig or profile (Depending on what is allowed for that website).

 

[MasterA]

I've opened up a couple of new forums, and I just don't know where to start in terms of getting people coming to a forum. I've spread the word to friends, but I'm really the only person in my friend group that is even into internet forums, hence a partial reason why I started one.

Outside of the obviousness of using this site, are there other steps that you took in terms of getting your forum off the ground? Was there anything that was helpful in going from just yourself and maybe a test account to someone else actively posting?

A few things you can do is work on SEO, advertise your forum on different forums/websites that allow advertising, social media marketing and possibly buying advertisement on websites.

 

[Page]

It's hard. very hard. It's not easy as it was back 5 years ago. SEO is important and being active is another

 

[davidper]

promote and participate detention seo forums to bring people to your forum successful

 

[Teg]

Well, my Harry Potter project isn't even open to the "public" yet. We're just getting beta testers at the moment and letting them post and such until we finish and are ready to launch. That said, we went from 4-50+ members in less than 24 hours after posting the link into a facebook group. We weren't looking for that many testers, but it works for us as we've been able to correct a lot of issues we didn't know the project had.

Advertise in groups on facebook that relate to your communities niche. However, make sure to read the rules in each group before posting links as some groups won't allow it at all, others will only allow advertising weekly, and some won't have rules about advertising at all.