Good Advertising Guide By: Jasonp

Be Different!

This is the hardest thing to do when running a forum. These days the internet is full of fansites and communities on all sorts of different topics. To get the forum kicked off you must do something different whether its through the sites look’s, features or offering a special kind of service that other forums haven’t done yet. You want your members to return right? Well make them come back.

Welcome New Comers

Always welcome new members, people like to be welcomed. If they find it’s a nice friendly community they will jump into discussion, a good friendship with your members is essential. When welcoming them you can link them to essential topics to start them off e.g. rules announcements or starting points, new members look for help and if you help them they will help your forum grow.

Remind Your Members

Reminding your members is essential to get some activity back; people often join a forum participate for awhile and then forget about their new forum. Even if your site is unique some people will manage to forget it, luckily for you administrators most forums require an email on signup using this list send out newsletters news etc. to anyone who hasn’t visited your forum in awhile. I wouldn’t do this a lot because it may cheese off potential members coming back or put off new members by crowding there email inbox.

Be Active

Members don’t like to see their staff inactive and not participating. It's essential to spend a lot of time on your forum and show passion on your forum subject. Bring in new features, discussions etc. and show that you treat members with respect. Administrators must show that they are active and visible in the community. Members need to know that if they come to problems or questions that they can PM or leave topics and expect feedback soon.

Content

Good, unique and fresh content is vital. It is the key for search engine spiders to search your website and return with visitors interested in your topic. Whether it’s a forum post, an article or a guide, the more you have the more information the users will look up on and hopefully stay and become involved in discussion.


Guide written by Jasonp for Forum Promotion and Netbuilders