Your Most Active Members - How did they find your forum?

[Captured Enigma]

People found me from Facebook ads and Google 🙂

 

[DearSweetAru]

My most active members are people I know in real life and some online friends I've met over the years. Next up would be the people that they recruit and so on.

Occasionally I get members elsewhere... but it's mostly that.

 

[Forces of Steel]

Most of our active members heard of my Web site through Facebook. Some of them have also joined from other blogs and forums.

 

[Mikaya]

The majority came from Google. The forum has a decent ranking. Some came from watching an ad video on YouTube that a member of the community created, it was very effective. 😀

 

[MasterA]

I believe my most active members found my forum via Google or other search engine. SEO has given me a lot of traffic.

 

[Geoffrey]

Most of my active members on any forum I've ever had have been friends from other forums that joined right away or as soon as they heard about the site.

Random people I get from advertising don't seem to stick around.

 

[MrDawn]

Word of mouth is really it.

Thats pretty much what I relied on. Told my friends on other forums and promoted here. That was it for me.

 

[Rinirinirin]

Most of my active members were buddies of mine from other sites. In some cases, it was a site I left because of some bad people and I wanted to stay in touch with the goodies. In other cases we were friends on a forum I do frequent and just decided more communication is pretty cool. In one case a group of friends and I all left a site at the same time in a group.

So it's pretty much all mutual so far.

 

[TeckForums]

Interesting thread here, big search engines though.

 

[Forces of Steel]

Most of our active members were already friends of mine, so all that it took was to link them.

 

[Undoxable]

Probably SEO, or from other forums

 

[Sharon]

I enjoyed reading everyone's opinion on this topic. So what it comes down to:

1. Build relationships in other communities and you will increase your chances of gaining active members for your own community. Don't just borderline 'spam'.

2. Offer something in your forum that other people might seek (e.g. FP's promotional services)

3. Establish great SEO so people doing regular search engines queries can find you.

Did I miss any?

 

[mushroompizza]

Some guy I found on 4chan. 🙁

 

[Teapot]

Most likely through promotion forums or affiliates. 🙂

 

[Ashley z]

For the smaller forums I've been a part of, a lot of it is advertisement through forums and word of mouth. For a forum the size of FP, SEO plays a huge role in member base.

I agree with you about SEO. Whenever I've had a large project running, I have gotten a lot of new members from seeing my links in search engines. It's always awesome seeing new members on a site that you didn't personally invite and that came from a place you didn't directly advertise to (search engines).

 

[Reverie]

Mine consist of either
1. From old forums - friends I made over the past few years of being on forums.
2. Forum Promotion - the occasional person
3. Random searching for old friends and they come across the forum.

 

[nekoite]

My most active members come from all over the internet; I've never really stuck to one avenue of advertisement and it shows. Asking members where they heard about my forums will generally get a variety of answers ranging from 4chan to friends inviting them.

 

[Servo]

Through our main site

 

[nathanielrsuchy]

Mainly advertising on other forums. Hiding links to force others to register is a good tactic. If they want to see a link for certain content they have to register.

Edit: And they have to reply, it creates more content and retains users.

 

[Allenafaith]

Back when my forum was active, it was mostly my friends that were the most active. I told them about the site and they helped me out. Others came from Postloop.