How to promote a forum with no members/posts

[smartblogz]

happy it worked for you. cheers. postloop=postpoo

[Account Abandoned]

I suppose you have the right to call it what you want. But for some reason I can see you putting together a swing-set in every way that it shouldn't be put together all because you didn't read the directions, lol. Directions for things really explain how to do it. Its unlikely that post loop serves so many forums with so many great results but they are on a mission to screw you, lol.

[picnictutorials]

To get AAF going, I visited each day and posted 5 to 10 new topics in each section (mainly the niche sections) for about a month. I had a couple thousand topics and posts in a month. Its the dedication you are willing to apply to your forum Then after I had all those posts, I focused on getting more members and got a lot using Post Loop[/url] to ohelp get me started. You can also exchange posts with others by joining admin and promotion forums and requesting it. Once topics start getting more discussions going, it should start to pick orumup I rarely do post exchanges or post loop anymore because I have quite a few real members who enjoy coming to post at the forum We are nearing 10,000 posts and are less than 4 months old at AAF, PR3 and I think its either the largest or one of the largest admin forums powered by SMF

If you build it, they will come

Nice post. What kind of posts did you make 10 times a day in your forum? Questions or just info posts? Thanks!

[TheListener]

Picnic.

It really depends on the subject of the forum.

My forum as an example is for the local area in which I live.

The vast majority of posts will be in the forums Events Section.

[xrunner]

Nice post. What kind of posts did you make 10 times a day in your forum? Questions or just info posts? Thanks!

Can we have a look at your forum?

[jackregan]

To answer the original question, this is what I have done...

-Lots of SEO work (okay, there's arguments about that but I maintain it does work)
-Get a Facebook page and put links to new content there
-Ditto Twitter
-Do some Twitter follower targeting to get some follows
-Do a little bit of paid Facebook advertising for your page (mush more cost effective than Google AdWords since a 'like' is permanent!)
-Get as many backlinks as you can

There's more, but I won't bore you. For me, twitter has been the big winner!

[Arantor]

As part of your 'SEO' work, did you actually write new content?

[Account Abandoned]

To answer the original question, this is what I have done...

-Lots of SEO work (okay, there's arguments about that but I maintain it does work)

What do you define as SEO, though?

I mean a lot of it won't work on a forum unless you go around changing people's stuff and then possible scaring them off in the process... Content building and relevant back links should be the only focus on the SEO side IMO.

If you write great content that cannot be found anywhere else, I imagine you will have a great forum

[jackregan]

Yes, SEO mostly involves great content. But there's other stuff you can do too. Find your keywords and put them in the title, in the tags, in page headings, in board names etc, get backlinks, submit an xml site map to google. etc etc...

It seems to be a controversial area, as I know many people here don't think it works, but my testimony, for what it's worth, is that it has significantly increased my traffic.

I have to say, Twitter (with a lot of follower targeting) is better though.

Anyhow...

[Arantor]

Find your keywords and put them in the title, in the tags, in page headings, in board names etc, get backlinks, submit an xml site map to google. etc etc...

You can put keywords in the forum title, the board titles - but not topic titles unless you're writing all the topics yourself. I don't know any site whose users go out and make SEO "friendly" titles or content.

Getting backlinks is primarily about having content worth linking to and then sharing it in places where it's worth sharing with.

submit an xml site map to google. etc etc...

That's not really a big deal if you have proper navigation and linking. The only way it might be a difference is if you indicate proper relevancy between pages to target individual pages (this is also true for *any* site).... it doesn't say 'you must index this', it merely says 'here's what content we have and how relevant we think it is', though you can also indicate typical age of content.

But even that's hard to do when you don't have total control over the site's content. Which on a user-driven site like a forum, you won't.

[jackregan]

Some good points.

It's perhaps a little different for me because I use my site as more of a blog/ magazine site, using TinyPortal.

[Kindred]

and see....  you are not actually using a FORUM, you are just using the forum software as a BLOG.

BLOGS, you get to set the content and can pick your terms (even though much of what you list is still not that important)
FORUMS, you don't get to pick the content. Users post what users want to post and frequently do not use appropriate titles or even decent content.

[SimpleJoe]

I think one of the most important first things to do is to invite some community managers or moderators to join the forum. They could be people you know or people you have crossed paths with regarding the topic of your forum. What happens is they then tell their contacts about it, and word spreads.

[Raths Rants]

To answer the original question, this is what I have done...

-Lots of SEO work (okay, there's arguments about that but I maintain it does work)
-Get a Facebook page and put links to new content there
-Ditto Twitter
-Do some Twitter follower targeting to get some follows
-Do a little bit of paid Facebook advertising for your page (mush more cost effective than Google AdWords since a 'like' is permanent!)
-Get as many backlinks as you can

There's more, but I won't bore you. For me, twitter has been the big winner!

Say what you want this is very solid advice. Facebook and Twitter can give your forum huge exposure if used correctly. After that you have to maintain quality content to keep your user base up.

All my forums have been based around online games I have played. So it helps to be active in the community your are trying to lure to your site.

At the end of the day you have to be providing something that makes your site worth visiting.

[jackregan]

I definitely agree.

I seem to have had some flack on this site in recent weeks for my position that SEO basically works. And it does. However, yes, I absolutely agree that you're nothing without content. Good content is the key to everything.

[Arantor]

SEO works. SEO on a forum that's actually being *used* as a forum (which yours isn't) doesn't.

[jackregan]

I totally accept the general premise that since you have less control over content on a forum, SEO is less effective, but surely there is still something you can do and some difference you can make: names of forum boards, title tags etc etc...

It takes a bit of editing of index templates in some cases.

Anyway... I'm happy to bow to the common wisdom

[Arantor]

Names of forum boards are actually very minimal. Title tags are already done anyway.

In fact the only thing I would argue a forum can do is set up proper and decent meta descriptions just in case Google can't find a better thing in the body of the post itself (as it usually does for this site anyway), and of course canonical tags - but SMF does the latter correctly and the former might as well not be bothered with.

[Kindred]

Arantor... one thing I noticed is that jack seems to think that you should stuff keywords into the board names and descriptions...

[Arantor]

Too much keyword stuffing is actually a bad idea.