We are in the midst of revamping the PowerHomeBiz.com forum, with all its contents removed and new posts not allowed. As we are rethinking of what to do with the forum, here are some of my learnings in how to get your forum noticed based on our, um, less-than-stellar performance:
1. Start with content. Think of your audience and what they want to talk about. Then make sure you have those categories. Start with the most pressing issues, then expand as your forum grows.
2. Make sure that your forum does not look “dead”. Make your forum appear that there’s some action going on. I know of many forum owners who “seed” their forum — putting posts by creating multiple accounts — to get the question and answer going. Stop if other people start participating.
3. Advertise where your users are. Buy targeted advertising — from ads in ezines or newsletters, buy text links. Pay per click ads on the search engines and partner sites will also work well. Costly, yes but needed to get the attention of your target audience.
4. Issue press releases announcing your new forum. While outfits charge as much as $650 per release, there are free press release submission places on the Web. Press releases allow you to (a) attract media attention; (b) get more back links to your website without sending each website an email request; and (c) get more visibility especially if your press release gets in Google News or Yahoo News.
5. Check your forum software if it is spiderable and indexable by the search engines. I know of some forum software such as Ikonboard (the one we use) where you have to install a plugin just to allow the contents to be read by the search engine. Your forum should be in the search engines. If not, use Google Sitemap and submit an XML file of the contents of your forum on a regular basis.
6. Give incentive for current subscribers to refer other subscribers/members. Think of a way that will make it easy for others to refer your forum to others. Check if your software has this capability; or if none, find a plug in or a third party software that will allow others to refer your forum to others. Viral marketing is very important, and it is your role to make it easy for others.
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About Isabel Isidro
Question: Is it really ethical to “seed” a forum or is that just the way it is?
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It’s a strategy, not about a question of ethics. Even MySpace was started with postings of its founder. If you can avoid it and get genuine users right off the gate, so much the better. You can ask people in your circle to post relevant , or you can invite people you know or network with to post in your forum. You can request your Twitter followers to post in your forum.
Your problem is that chicken-and-egg situation: people will not post in your forum if they see it “dead” with no activity; but then how can your forum become active if no one wants to post on it. It is a tough first challenge for forum owners, so you need to do a lot of preplanning and prelaunch marketing, including keeping the site in beta and available only to select invitees who’ll then post in your forum. Once you think there’s enough posts to show activity, then you make the forum public.
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Thanks Isabel for responding quickly. This is basically the same question I posted in the phpbb forum. Yeah, I prefer to do my homework before diving in.
Anyway, your response is similar… I appreciate your answer. Now to see if I can get the forum activity level up and running.
Thanks Again
(you have the website address, feel free to stop in)
Jim
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Great post
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