Promotion Guide:
There are hundreds of thousands forums out there on the web. The ones who are succeeding and active are very few.
Many times, the administrator opens up a forum. He either left it there or cannot get people to join. The forum lays there dead for years.
What a waste of resources? :roll:
Being in the forum business for over 4 years, having seen enough forums that are dead, and enough people making a fool of themselves by posting
�Join my forum� everywhere on the internet, I made this guide just to help forum runners with better understanding of forum marketing and promotion. So your forum wouldn�t end up being what I just talked about.
First of all, to run a forum, you need to state an intention. Everything we do right need to have a right reason. For instance, if you would like to make a forum for an existing organization, or if you want to make one for a business that you operate, or even you want to make one for friends and just hanging out.
Those are good reasons, but very different purposes. Only once you acknowledge that purpose you then can move forward with marketing strategies, promotion strategies, and a start running a forum.
Once you have decided to make a forum, the very next thing you need is to think of a Name, a unique, descriptive forum name that separates your forum from the millions of others.
At the very deepest, your Forum Name must possess the following qualities: Simple, Unique, and precise.
You forum name should be easy to remember, easy URL to type, and easy to refer to.
Uniqueness helps you build your forum identity. Finally the name should precisely describe your forum content to what your forum will eventually be.
What comes right after that would be a forum theme. This closely relates back to the purpose in which you made the forum.
But now you would like to be more specific. Think of something that you are passionate about. Think of something that will worth people spent time signing up your forum that can be talked about and being an apart of.
You should notice that this step is vital to the success of your forum. Only when you have a clear theme, you would be able to go ahead with configuring the forum, designing the template, and making the necessary posts and threads.
Find something you are really passionate about and make it your theme.
When you have your those plans and directions set out, you then can move on with the actual technical aspect of your forum.
To start off, it may be nice to pick an ideal template. This template should fit to your forum theme nicely. Considering the combination of colors, styles, and atmosphere you should try pick the most appropriate one.
TIP: You can go to PHPBBHACKS.com to pick nice template
If you absolutely cannot find one that goes with your forum, or if you do not know how make one yourself, don�t worry its not the end of the world.
You should know that there are many forums out there with the default template and experiences much more success than the ones who actually have one.
Your focus then should be on the actual content of your forum.
Next thing you need to decide the ideal number of boards that you need to make. Usually when you are starting off, you wouldn�t want to have too many boards. Thus, this will make your forum look very empty, and harder to manage by yourself. Also the name and nature of your boards must be closely related to your theme.
Once you have your boards all set, you should start posting threads related to your topic. I know this may seem awkward as there may be no one around to read those posts, but in order to succeed you may go through this process. No one wants to visit a forum that has 0s all over them. No one will join them. No one will start posting in them.
Therefore, you, as the Administrator must take the initiative to supply qualities post to provide valuable reasons for visits. Start to fill up those Zeroes by making some very quality posts which will eventually be the true asset for your forum.
If you have your forum gears all set, the next thing which is the most fun part would be forum marketing.
Before you do this however, you need to ask yourself the following questions:
- What are the potential audiences/visitors of my forum? :?: (Age group, professions, political opinions, geographical regions etc)
Why would people come to visit my forum? :?:
What are the things I can offer? :?:
When you have those questions answered, it is very easy and fun to move ahead with actual promotions.
Submit to major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN)
Try to establish affiliate with other related topic forums.
Tell your friends and people whom you know about your forum.
Do not be afraid going on the web and promote your forum. You just got to do it the right way.
TIP: You can find resources on ADDME.com
As I�m speaking to you right now, many of you are trying to promote your forum within this community. The silly thing is that all of us(of not all) here already have a forum, we need not bother to join other forums that sometimes even promises us a Moderator.
The �Join My forum� just doesn�t work around here. :wink:
I do encourage you all do get out and be exposed on the Internet!!! There are much vast amount of audiences there.
(Staff members I�m not here trying to get your members off your forum.
)
But you do always need to come back if you need support and just learn from others.
To wrap things up, I suggest you to constantly learn new things and try out what works for your forum.
Do research on search engine marketing and website promotion techniques.
Constantly be active and constantly maintain the passion for your forum. Trust me one day you will have a functional, active, forum community on the web.
Good Luck
D.D
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