After noticing a ton of forums here fail within the first 1k posts, I decided to make this guide on how you should make your forum launch as smooth as possible. Here's a general guide to go about doing it:
With the help of a good staff team, and decent advertising tactics, there's no reason why you shouldn't get 40k-50k posts, and 350-400 members in the first year.
- 1. Make sure you have your theme and banner ready in advance. Most forum users aren't picky when it comes to graphics, so don't worry too much if your theme has been used already. Similarly, your banner just has to look ''nice''. Generally eye-catching banners alienate as many people as they attract, so go for a fairly inoffensive one.
2. Normally a lot of people will complain if your forum has five or so staff members at launching time. I can tell you from experience, they are wrong. More staff means that you'll be able to launch a lot quicker, because in the early days of a forum, moderators often push activity. Get them putting up rules for their sections and starting plenty of threads, so that when you're members start coming in they'll be encouraged to post!
3. Soft openings sometimes work for people. Get a few of your closest online-friends to join, and make a few posts around. Generally I try to have about 500 posts in the public forums before I launch anything.
4. Hype the launch! Preadvertise! Tell all the people on your MSN and AIM buddy lists, twitter, Facebook, Tumbler, Blog, younameit about your forum. If you do enough of this, you should have over 30 members joining on the first day. You really need to have good networking skills for this.
5. Having your forum work off a website or blog helps enormously. Announce the arrival of the forum on your website, and make sure the people who visit your blog or website regularly are excited about it!
7. Advertise: no other word for it. Have signatures designed that you can use to promote it on other forums of a similar/complementary genre! Use promotion forums like FP. And make sure you get a Facebook page and a Twitter in advance! You have no idea how useful these two are in keeping your users interested...
6. Keep the momentum going and don't give up! Make sure you have staff members that care a lot about the forum, so they won't give up if you are going through a difficult stage. What really makes users want to stay about a forum, is not just the activity, but also the community atmosphere. It really is important that your staff members have good personality.
With the help of a good staff team, and decent advertising tactics, there's no reason why you shouldn't get 40k-50k posts, and 350-400 members in the first year.
