Word of Mouth (Best Form of Advertising?)

[Vennom]

I found that affiliating with the same sort of genre boards has helped mine, but to affiliate helps if it is a mutual posting thing as well, you post there and they post at yours, a lot will base their affiliation on that rule. But getting your board out there is it really

[Mixed]

Jan 13, 2016 6:31:47 GMT -8 Vennom said:

I found that affiliating with the same sort of genre boards has helped mine, but to affiliate helps if it is a mutual posting thing as well, you post there and they post at yours, a lot will base their affiliation on that rule. But getting your board out there is it really

By "post", do you mean the affiliation banner? Yeah, that is a good way to advertise, but I have yet to see it work in a solid way for my forum yet. Then again, my forum is still young.

But I'm kind of thinking now that Word of Mouth is probably the most DIRECT way of advertising. Everything else is very passive - leaving someone you don't know a message they may or may not see. At least with Word of Mouth, you can see they got the message and you can have a general idea (depending upon how expressive they are) if it was taken in a positive or negative light. Just have to get passed the shy thing to do that.

[Former Member]

My forum is gradually growing, though it takes a bit of encouragement to get members to activity seek out threads to participate in. For example, recently I made it so that members will get a custom title once they reach 100 posts. I am hoping to get a little more activity by hosting this challenge.

[♥ ℒʊ√ ♥]

Mixed , I think many who spend time in cyber do so  because they are shy and/or naive. So they find their comfort zone in anonymity. And there's nothing wrong with that. Before the internet, they found comfort in reading (always a good thing), but had no outlet to express themselves to a large audience in their own words and yet remain unknown. But then came message boards, forums/boards, and then social media.

And those grew to such an extent, that it's now very hard for smaller venues to compete. Even the original pathsetters like AOL and MySpace got lost in the shuffle. 

I think "throwing a thread" out there to see if you can contact your old community members is an excellent idea. It certainly holds no negatives. You've nothing to lose and everything to gain.

And absolutely, word of mouth is a form of direct advertising. Shouting from the rooftops is another! 

[Mixed]

Sorry, ♥ ℒʊ√ ♥. I had to step away before actually responding to this. But I'm back!

That actually makes a lot of sense! Within the comforts of anonymity, they can say whatever they want without fear of judgement passing over. (too bad some take this too far) In this way, they can forget their stage fright and go for it while discovering their voice and who they are.

It's amazing how much social media grew and it's funny to think that people thought it was just a fade when it was only starting out. I may be a bit old-fashioned but I still use AOL Instant Messenger, granted it's only with 3 people but still I use it. Never had a MySpace myself. I had avoided social media up until a few years ago when my best friend basically blackmailed me into making one. Lol!

I probably will do that. I may need to bump it quite a few times but who knows? Like you said, I've got nothing to lose from doing so.

Hehe. And at least word of mouth doesn't run the risk of being cited for public disturbance.

[♥ ℒʊ√ ♥]

There you go, Mixed . That's the spirit.

There will always be folks who take things too far under cover of anonymity. But they are cowards and not worth a second thought.

There is absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain. We'll never know success (or failure) unless we DO something. And even failure is far better than sitting back and doing nothing. That will always guarantee failure.

I have a few friends who still use AOL, too. It's still around, so why not?

[Pebbles]

i have come to the realization that telling people about my kpop forum has had more effect than affiliating or even having a good ranking on google when people search for ''kpop forum''
even signature advertising does little to nothing