Tips On Advertising Your Forum

[Former Member]

These are some tips I've thought of for your forum, how to advertise, and tips to keep people coming back.




•Social Media
Post your forum on popular social medias, like Facebook, which is the most popular social media. If you edit your account where anyone can view your posts on there, lots of people will see it, and out of interest click your link. Maybe they'll even join it! Be sure to include what your forum is about, maybe a pic or two of the forum as well. 


•Signatures & Similar
In your signature on here, you can include a picture in your sig and when clicked will take you to the forum. I suggest getting an attractive pic with the name & shirt description about your forum on it. E.g. would be: "Chattybox - general discussion forum" or something like that. Also, when they go to your forum, I suggest putting up a welcome message, with some links to some boards and a sign up link.


•Welcome PM
I highly recommend to have a Welcome PM in your forum. Talk about your forum, get some interesting links in there, and gladly accept your new member to the forum! If you make the member feel like home and enjoy themselves, they may even come back the next day.



Getting Your Members To Come Back

This is one of the hardest things. Most times you'll get some members, but they're not active. Here are some tips for that:

•Be Active!
It helps alot if you're really active too! If you post every day, maybe get some events going too, your members will start posting and being active too, because your forum is really active and fun too! Also try to keep your members notified of things going on around your forum. If you're taking a vacation, or the forum theme is changing, or a birthday is coming up - let your members know! They'll be excited and have something fun to look forward to.

•Friendly & Welcoming
Lots of members like it if they're treated good, if the rules aren't harsh, and you can go "free-range" as I like to call it.  Like I said in the Welcome PM, welcome your member to the forum and talk about what you can do, features, and links. 



Themes & Colors

Personally, I'm 50-50 with this one. Maybe themes are important, maybe they aren't, but will members come back if your theme isn't good? I don't really know this one, or tips about it, so moving on.


Features 

Does having unique features help? I think it does some. I'm always impressed when I see a feature that you can only do in code, and sometimes think about joining. Just a small little thing sometimes can get interest. 


This is all for now. Sorry guys, might add more later. Hope it helps!

[Former Member]

Your not wrong! You are just going about it in the wrong way.

*Social Media
- you need to drive TARGETED traffic(to gain organic traffic)
*Signatures
- will drive a little traffic, mostly curious people
*keep people coming back
- have unique content people enjoy coming back for.

[Former Member]

Sept 19, 2016 18:50:17 GMT -8 @synthtec said:

Your not wrong! You are just going about it in the wrong way.

*Social Media
- you need to drive TARGETED traffic(to gain organic traffic)
*Signatures
- will drive a little traffic, mostly curious people
*keep people coming back
- have unique content people enjoy coming back for.

Oooh, I see, this is just what I was thinking about in that moment, might change it later

[♥ ℒʊ√ ♥]

@quadrill , I thought your suggestions were well thought out.

Keep up the good work.  I'm sure members will benefit from your suggestions. 

[Chrissiest Chris]

I've used Facebook and other social media to advertise my forum, but I just end up looking like a spam bot. Seeing as my forum is for a (Well, three different) TV series, I gotta advertise on places where fans of said show are. AKA the shows official Facebook page etc. Most of my members I've got are from messaging people I already knew from other places online, and sort of well known people who often comment on a lot of videos related to these shows. Only 5 members are strangers I had never communicated with before, and only 1 of them are active. It's funny though cause two of them I see have been online 'in the last 24 hours' often, but never post.

[Former Member]

For one of my forums I tried out Twitter.

Advertising on Social Medias may not be the answer for everyone.
How about word of mouth?
How about sending out invitations?

[Former Member]

If your posting on social media just setup your page and find people who like the niche your forum is about.

For Facebook you would find groups and join them. Don't spam them but get involved in some of the conversations, people will then be curious about your comment's and checkout your profile.

For twitter you would use free tools such as tweepi or crowdfire to go find people who might be interested in joining your forum.
 
Your profile page is where you would post interesting stuff. You don't need to do this manually though.
Proboards already supports social media cards.

So lets say you post an interesting thread. Under the "actions" dropdown menu you can share the thread to your social media platform. Only do this if your thread is content rich though, don't share it if you are say asking a questions or the thread has less than say 100 words, that would be a bit spammy.

You can also add a 200x200 image for social media under admin->settings->forum_settings->social_media->Social Media Image

There is a really good tool called buzzbundle that will help you find forums or blogs related to your niche/keyword that you can engage with.  If you do engage with forums or blogs, just make sure you have a banner or link in your signature.

Hope that helps! It will take time to build a community but now you have some tools to help you!

[tobidadog]

Thanks for the awesome tips! I've never tried the Facebook thing.

[Chrissiest Chris]

Recently used Google Plus to advertise and it's working great. I've only gained three members, but that's in roughly 7 days, which is more than ever. I still don't like looking like spam, but I don't know any other way to do it. At least I don't copy and paste the same thing over, I always rewrite my posts and comments to make them different from one another. Unfortunately the people joining seem to just register, and read. No posts from 'em yet.