I'd like to promote http://www.businessadviceforum.com more and I'd welcome any suggestions you might have to would help with that. Our search engine listings are good, for our key search terms. I'm particularly interested in any suggestions you might have that would get people talking about the site and recommending us to their friends.
Great site Fergal and a lot of members. May I suggest a different theme maybe as the current is a little bland. Looks like a great place to go to get professional business information though 🙂
A good idea to promote it is to find other similar(ish) forums and post around there with a banner or a link in your sig to your site. If you post where there are large numbers of people that would be interested in your site, it would lead to alot of people visiting and generate alot of interest in your site compared to advertising in other places where the audience may not be as interested.
Go to Yahoo answers and sign up, and start answering business questions. You can then link to your forum from there. Digg is also another great tool for promoting.
Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn - I've used them all to some extent. However, I feel I could be getting a lot more from them. I suppose I need a plan for using them and then stick to it.
I have thought of a custom theme, however they are quite expensive and I'm not sure how much it would really help. I've seen some huge forums on very basic and even default themes.
I've posted on similar forums, it takes a lot of time and although some members have signed up at my forum, there hasn't really been enough to justify the time and effort involved.
Yahoo Answers, is something I might actually try.
I'm really looking for something that will get our existing members talking and recommending the forum to their friends.
