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Forum Advertising: how to!

This is the biggest hurdle an administrator of a new forum has to jump. This is Everest. Advertising your forums is never easy but is something that can be accomplished. Advertising your forum takes a lot of effort, and hard work. However, never listen to people who say advertising costs money. NEVER. Because there are so many very effective ways that you can bring traffic and members to your website without dipping into the retirement fund.

I must say, before you even release your forums - you need to ask some of your close friends to become a member and start posting. Because members do not want to go into an empty forum, they want to go into a populated and active environment that has a lot of posts that they can talk on. So I would recommend getting at least 2 friends to start posting a lot. If you can not do that, then your forums will be empty. So what you can do is sign up for a promotion forum and usually, they have a currency system they may call it 'Forum $'. You should post around and make your presence clear and earn some of the forum dollars. With these dollars pay people  to make posts on your forums. For example:

"10 Posts for 100 F$ on sitename.com"

This actually works. Although those people won't come back to your forums, they kick start it! More on promotion forums below.

Promotion Forums

There are several ways to advertise your forums. Most of these can be done by actually using other forums. Before you start you may want to get a paragraph made about why people should join your forums. You want to make it short, and it must tell them why they should join your forums. Let them know what your forum offers but be very clear. You may want to add a graphic to your post as well.

Once you have something like the above, then you are ready to go. Now to hit some promotion forums. I have prepared a list of promotion sites, that are reliable and actually do work. I used them for my forums and in one month I had 100 members and 4,000 posts. By the way, for the list of promotion forums below, I am not using a referral system or anything - I am trying to help you and am not interested in profit.

Click here for the list of promotion forums, register on them and then read on.

Use that very detailed list to advertise your forums. Also, you may notice that I added a topsite in there. Well I would recommend signing up for that also, I guarantee that it helps - it is also ran by me.

When you are on the promotion forums, post around - make yourself known. I can guarantee that you can make a lot of good friends on there. You will get friends who can make you graphics fast and free, friends that will join your forums and be active just because they like you.

Directories, Link Exchanges & SEO

Another way to have your forums viewed is by submitting your forums into forum directories. This helps a lot. Some people go through a stage of looking for a new community if they do not like their other one. They use directories to find their new home. It's simple really, just submit your forums into the directory. Some directories make you link back to them and supply a link to the page that you linked them on. Just make a new page or something and put their link on it and then put that in. There is no point in having your forum bombarded with links and banners.

Click here to go to a list of directories kindly made by me.

SEO is also something that gives your forums a lot more exposure, and members. Even if it is in the long run. SEO Stands for Search Engine Optimization - Wikipedia will explain more. To increase SEO, submit your forums into search engines. Click here to submit your forums to google. Also key words are a big impact on search engine results. If you can make your forums have the thread name in the URL, then do it. If someone googles: "how to get rich". Your forums may have a topic called "how to get rich". So you should make sure that your forums do this:

www.yourforums.com/thread/how-to-get-rich

onstead of

www.yourforums.com/thread/4748

This will put you further up in the search results. It also looks a hell of a lot neater.

Link exchanges are also an effective way to increase your forums traffic and exposure. A link exchange is also known as an affiliation or a button swap. This means that you put another websites link on your forums, and they put a link to your forums on their website. This means that your site is easier to get to - so it makes sense to do some of these. You should make yourself a forum affiliate button.

Remember though, you do not want to affiliate with websites or forums that are never seen. Make sure that every single time you affiliate with somebody that it is benefiting you. Never mind doing it for the sake of it. Always affiliate with the bigger forum/site. If you don't you will have a lot of banners. You can also use the promotion forum to find  link swaps.

Personal Advertisement

Personal Advertisement is when you target one person and ask them to join your forums. It is not advertising to the masses. For example, a good way of doing this which also utilizes promotion forums is by private messaging people on the actual forums. The following is going to sound cunning but it definitely works. Make sure that you actually do make the private message personal with the person's username. Also sound very friendly, and slightly moronic. Here is one that I have used.

Hey, [USERNAME]!
I own the forums, www.offtopicden.com - they are general forums and are pretty active so far. Anyway, I have seen you post around and notice that you're kinda helpful and you're just the guy I want on my forums. Sign up man, your presence will be valued.
If you don't then, that's cool. Cya [USERNAME]!

Trust me, I actually got a few very active members to my forums by doing this. One of them became a brilliant moderator with over 300 posts.

Another great way of personally advertising your forums is to use instant messengers like MSN, AIM and Yahoo! These are actually brilliant ways. I had a lot of people that I did not speak to on my IMs but they seen that my forums had potential and signed up. Give them a quick personal message like:

Hey, [NAME]. Visit my forums, www.offtopicden.com - they are general forums, with a chilled atmosphere. If you like them then sign up bro!

The 'man' or 'bro' at the end adds to the personal effect brilliantly. This technique also got me a few loyal members. Be sure to put the link to your forums in your name or personal message this does help too.

Online gaming is a good way to advertise your forums too. For example Xbox Live and the Playstation Network allow you to send a message to all of your friends. Send them a message explaining what your forum is, and actually let them know what a forum is - some of them are too busy playing games to know. This does definitely help.

You can also go on chat rooms online and personal message people similar messages, but watch out because if a moderator catchers you PMing people on forums or chat rooms you will be banned.

Social Networking

Social Networking is websites like Twitter, Bebo, Myspace and Facebook. Create groups on there for all of your users to join and let it provide a description and visible link on it to your forums. Many people who are surfing networking sites may stumble upon it and sign up to your forums. This is also a good way to get members to return, because if you post your updates and competitions on it members who haven't been in a while will be alerted and may return. ForumPromo has Twitter, everytime a new blog post is created an announcement to all of our followers on Twitter is made. http://www.twitter.com/forumpromo - follow us by the way.

Opening Competitions

If you have a tiny bit of extra cash, then here's some ideas:

To make your forums more appealing you can put a competition up for example: 'Cash Draw $10" would make them want to sign up. You can make it a 5 post entry requirement which means that they would make 5 posts just to get that $10.

A referral competition is also a very smart choice. If your forums have a referal system, like VBulletin does then you can start a referral contest. For example: The people who get the most referrals by 5,000 posts will win the following:

1st Prize:  $10

2nd Prize: $5

3rd Prize $2

This will actually gain you a lot of members - it is very effective. You could also say that every referred member must make at least one post. Or five posts, it depends how much you value your money. Beware though, as some people may try and make multiple accounts to give themselves more referrals. Check the IPs to deter cheaters.

All of the above can be done with items too, like games and movies. You could actually have a website give you a voucher to use for their shop or a discount on a voucher - as they will be making money. So they will effectively be sponsoring the contest.

Other Ways to Advertise your forums

• If your forums are about gaming or something like that, you can upload a gaming video to youtube which has a link to your forums. This is a technique employed by many large websites.

• If you post on other forums, put a link or a signature banner on to your signature. This actually works.
• Pay for advertisement slots on other websites, do not bust the bank however, as there are mixed results. I would strongly discourage Google's Adsense for forums. I paid £100 for one of my older forums and it done me absolutely no good!
• In promotion forums you can use 'Forum Dollars' to get people to put your link into their signature - this is an effective method.
• Promotion Forums - Packages is another useful thing you can get for 'Forum Dollars'. Promotion forums usually have a 'package team' which will post X amount of times on your forums for hardly any 'Forum Dollar's.
• Hire promoters for your forums, give them a rank, make them feel special. Tell them that there is expected to be a certain amount of new registrars per month. That they have to help delivering this by any method possible.

To conclude, I would like to say that this has taken me hours to create. It has almost 2,000 words. If you use the above methods and your forums do not see more members, then do not try and blame me - it will probably be your fault as your forums are just not good enough. Due to design or something. I am personally happy to help you out with your forums. Swing me an e-mail at my personal address: minikiltman at gmail dot com and I will help you out.

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