Why Advertise an Empty forum?

[hcfwesker]

One of the most common mistakes for new forum owners is they finish the design, yet leave all of the boards empty of threads. No matter how beautiful your board is, if there are no posts, there is no reason for members to register. I mean who wants to register to an empty board with nothing to reply to. As the admin, it is extremely important that you fill in those empty boards with posts, even if they are starter topics, so potential new members will have something to reply to.

You created them, right? So they must be of some interests to you. Well, then, there's no reason there shouldn't be any provided content for new members when they arrive.

As the admin of your forum, it is solely up to you to provide fresh content for your members to reply to. You cannot create a forum and expect members to provide the content for you.

YOU have to provide the content, on a daily basis, if possible, during the beginning phase of your new forum. Most members are not thread creators. As an admin it is your responsibility yo ensure that each day when members log on they have something new and fresh to reply to.

In my time I've seen some alot of admins who have failed to do this, and ultimately, their forum has died because the posters has nothing to reply to, got bored and left.

New members like to test the waters, before they dive right in, and without anything to go by, will find a much bigger pond to swim in somewhere else.

You must drive the forum in content. No one else is going to do this for you. It's all part of being the administrator of the board.

So please, if you want your board to be a success, fill in all of the empty Boards after you have completed it, then provide daily content for your members to reply to. Have all of this prepared, BEFORE you venture of into this next big step, "Advertising".

And, yes, this is commom knowledge. But still to this day, there are these mistakes being made by newer, less enthusiasts advertising admins.

 

[Nathan]

I must say, great advice. Ofcourse it is common sense (as mentioned above) but yet people still fail to abide by it. Running a forum isn't a walk in the park, no "dummy" can just start one. Why would people put the effort into your forum, if you, yourself won't do it? Me personally, wouldn't waste my time. Well anyways cheers for the advice mate 😉.

 

[Violetstar]

Wise advice, I probably post too much lol -lol- I always try to leave stuff open ended too by asking what others think or ask if they've had any similar experiences etc to try and encourage responses, I posted it elsewhere here but 'no one likes to be first up on an empty dancefloor,' forums are just the same imo

It's like going to a library with no books

 

[madyy32]

It's like going to a library with no books

I agree. I used to leave some empty before I started to advertise and it failed. Then I posted in those forums and more people joined. No one likes seeing a forum with nothing to do.

 

[50calray]

It's like going to a library with no books

Nice -8)-

I spent most of my free time looking for content before I ever started advertising. I wanted more than a few threads going before people started showing up. And even now that I started advertising I still spend a lot of time looking for content or ideas on topics to wright about.

 

[Merlin]

I think one of the best things to do in this case is to get 2-4 close friends of yours to help out in creating new topics. After a day or so, or when your forum reached 100 posts or so, then you can advertise it.

Although, I've seen worse. Forums with NO posts, NO logo, the default skin... some even had the default "welcome" post still. >_>

 

[AquaTeen]

You can advertise an empty board to get backlinks generated and indexed early. If you have your meta tags setup and a good domain name you can use anchor text and really build a decent spot on search engines before you have any content.

So if you are advertising for members, then don't do it. But if you are advertising for good SERP then go for it. Back before I knew how to advertise right it would frustrate the mess out of me to see gaming forums with 10 posts ranked in the top twenty while mine had well over ten thousand posts and was not getting anywhere on google. Once I figured out what I was doing it flew up in rankings though.

 

[Da Gamer]

Some great tips there and i agree with all of them, I have even experienced the problems before so I know what it is like but as long as you have the time when you set up a forum and the motivation and good ideas to get everything started it should turn out great, but if you are not going to lead by example it is a lot less likely that your forum will be a hit.

 

[epick]

Thanks for the tips. I been trying to post on my forums finally got another user's their to help me out -D-

 

[Zealotor]

Thanks for this Tip. I have been in forum management in 3months now and I'm the only one starting topics but still no one is joining even though the number of topics I started are around 50 with no replies. But I'll keep adding future content. One Question: Does the Topic need to be interesting?

 

[Mike]

When reviewing forums i constantly went over this, Empty forums do not look attractive one bit, they make the forum look inactive, Here at FP we have a very active post exchange forum that would help solve this problem.

Zealotor, interesting topics would attract more attention, but not every topic needs to be interesting i suppose 🙂

 

[lifetube]

thanks for the tips!

One advantage we had before opening out board, was a dedicated staff team who posted a lot of content before we went live. Our forum was effectively an alternative to another community everybody else used, and so most of them jumped ship and dived straight in! Therefore we didn't have this problem so much. But i see it all too often

 

[The Games Place]

Wise Words, i will now go happily fill my forum with starter topics 😀

 

[dragz]

thanks for the tips!

One advantage we had before opening out board, was a dedicated staff team who posted a lot of content before we went live. Our forum was effectively an alternative to another community everybody else used, and so most of them jumped ship and dived straight in! Therefore we didn't have this problem so much. But i see it all too often

that is interesting,

 

[Zealotor]

Do Forum games help also? How about trivias?

 

[Zenrer]

Forum games help alot I think, as all they have to do is answer in short sentences.

 

[roadley14]

Add stuff that people want to read meaning more page views and more advertisers.

 

[NBK*Twitch]

I agree I have learned this the hard way in the past...

Now I try to tell any new admin to make a few threads first then advertise and such.

 

[fantanoice]

THANK YOU!
I am so sick of admins not realising this. They wonder why their members aren't active. <_<

 

[SiderSouth]

This is great advice. I'm glad I found this topic- this should help me greatly with my new forum.