Word of Mouth (Best Form of Advertising?)

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myke said:

I realize we have a thread on advertising, but this is a little different.



Advertising on Google is great and all, but there is nothing better then one person telling another person how cool of a ProBoard they found, and suggest they check it out.

Now, admins, as a result, you must be kind and fair to your members. Word of mouth may get them there, but if the admins and staff are not going out of their way to make them feel welcome, then they will leave.

It is very important to make new members feel welcome, and to make them feel like they are part of the group, and not a lost soul on a board with a clique.

Study the digram above, and ask you members to tell their friends about your ProBoard. It may cause a chain reaction that will bring you a lot of traffic.

Anyone else wish to add to this?

man I should've put in something good here. hmmmm, let's see

Word-of-the-Mouth will work to the extent that it actually generates page hits, but the only problem I could foresee with this technique is, that it doesn't necessarily contribute to a person joining your forum. The problem many users have (even if it's just basic advertising techniques), is showing members that their forum is worth going to. Word-of-the-Mouth only worked for me, when I first created my forum . Now that it's been out for quite a long while (almost a year actually ). I now have to use a different technique to hopefully work. I don't know whether I have to do better designing or better formatting of my forum. I'll soon find out which of them works later

Like I said before, "Word-of-the-Mouth will work to the extent that it actually generates page hits..." however that doesn't in any particular form, make them join your forum, you'd have to have something that they'd want, which would be tougher to accumuluate

~*Improvisator*~

[xocharmingox]

I don't know about the rest of you, but word of mouth has not helped my forum, since most people care more about their forums, rather than advertising the forum in like three places or telling three people about it. Usually, I only see this work with forums like ProBoards Support, SoCal, Solid Snake Designs, etc. Oh, well, I'll try this again to re-test my thoughts, but I'm sure the same thing will happen as last time.

[sandra01]

:(I am kinda new to these boards. I cant get many people to join my boards. I was wondering how or if I can change the name in the link to my board.
Can anyone help me. I dont know either if I have the right board to post my question.

Sandra

[Gelfling]

Word of mouth is amazing, I have a huge success story, I started the Blind Melon forum thinking nobody would join, I had a Global moderator who helped me spread the word all over with yahoo groups, myspace, etc.....here we are a year an a half later and guess what? We are the OFFICIAL FORUM FOR THE BAND BLIND MELON and the Band Members post on the forum, and to top it all off I SPOKE TO THE GUITAR PLAYER ON THE PHONE and have traded emails with all of the band members, they love the forum and they love being in touch with their fan base. THis was all because Myself and and the staff just started spreading the word, its like a dream come true. Myspace is a great place to pass on information about a board/forum and you can even create a myspace account for your board, its a good way to promote.

[Timothy]

I usually ask friends and ex-members of the site that I broke away from to join, which quickly snowballs into gaining new members. In conjunction with the aforementioned tactic, I also plan on spreading the word of my site at comic conventions in the coming months/ years...

[A L M O S T A]

Name: A L M O S T A

ULR:
LINK REMOVED

Site Banner:
Will be posted. Currently getting updated.

Description:
This is a horse racing forum, where people over the age of 13 can own, train, and care for their very own horse. This is a role playing forum, where you must act out the parts of your characters. During the game their iwll be challenges for your character, and races for your horse to go through. We tried to make this more into relity with pictures and, soon to be, animated objects. This is site is a clean site and has no foul language and many more things that fall under that catigory. This horse site is one that is constantly have changes everyday, keeping our members happy the whole time through.

Why we posted here:
We currently only have 43 members, and some of them left wells they were under new managment by my co-worker, who honesly did not know how to run the site properly, and stick with the rules. So when I returned out of the 43, only 10 of them remained to wait for my arrival. We could really use some more members, and are currently getting back some of our old members that left. Please come join A L M O S T A this truly is a fun site.

[Enchant]

almosta said:

Name: A L M O S T A

ULR:
LINK REMOVED

Site Banner:
Will be posted. Currently getting updated.

Description:
This is a horse racing forum, where people over the age of 13 can own, train, and care for their very own horse. This is a role playing forum, where you must act out the parts of your characters. During the game their iwll be challenges for your character, and races for your horse to go through. We tried to make this more into relity with pictures and, soon to be, animated objects. This is site is a clean site and has no foul language and many more things that fall under that catigory. This horse site is one that is constantly have changes everyday, keeping our members happy the whole time through.

Why we posted here:
We currently only have 43 members, and some of them left wells they were under new managment by my co-worker, who honesly did not know how to run the site properly, and stick with the rules. So when I returned out of the 43, only 10 of them remained to wait for my arrival. We could really use some more members, and are currently getting back some of our old members that left. Please come join A L M O S T A this truly is a fun site.

I think that you mistook this for an advertising thread. You might try posting this in the advertising board. Mistakes happen...just make sure you are watching were you post in the future;)

[Divinity]

What I don't understand why there isn't a section here for promoting your board. That would make sense.

[gimel]

ive found that for a good forum, like my wolf site, word of mouth has gotten me a great deal of members without me realizing it. in fact, i just found out what the chain was today. i was amazed at how far back it went! one of the older members recruited a friend,who recruited a friend, who recruited a sibling,etc. and the chain just keeps growing like that.
the bottom line is, if people like your forum, they will get other people to join, if they dont like it as much, they wont insist that everyone they know check it out too.

[myke]

divinity said:

What I don't understand why there isn't a section here for promoting your board. That would make sense.

Umm support.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=pbadvertise

Next time please PM a moderator questions like this, this thread is reserved for discussion on word of mouth advertising. Please be sure to read the rules.

[HoudiniDerek]

saxor said:

Well, I have the problem that there are no members on my forum to spread the word...

That is where YOU come in.

Tell people about it, especially if you know they have the same interests as you. If they do, that would make it easier to get members and then it might expand.

Of course, there is the new board here for Advertising, but you will have to find a way to set it apart.

[Enchant]

saxor said:

Well, I have the problem that there are no members on my forum to spread the word...

Please do not post here unless it is relevent to the topic and that there is at least 3 to 4 sentences of thought. If you have a specific question, please direct it to the proper board or PM a mod.

[Thing-Thing]

uuuuh, word of the mouth sounds pretty cool, i used to advertise my forum on another forum where the admin said that if we had something unusual, the advert. thread wouldn't be deleted... but how do i tell my members to use the WOTM system? should i make a thread called "pyramid game advertising"?

[007]

Word of mouth advertising is great, but you must have something worth of value for your members to talk about and share with their friends!

You could take word of mouth to the next level!
Viral Marketing, basically it allows your visitors to promote your website or forum in one way or another!

Got something free to giveaway? Example one of my blogs use to give away free promotion ebooks and tools, within the ebook it has a link and advertisment to my site.

The most basic thing you guys should consider doing is put up one of those
"Tell A Friend Scripts'

[Gamoc]

You can, look at the bottom of a thread and you will see "sent topic to friend" Which I have found useful in getting members.

Word of mouth can work depending on who you are talking to. I would definitely suggest getting a couple of members before going to the word of mouth method that way they won't be just talking to you, they will be able to meet new people. If they were just talking to you, then that would ruin the whole point of getting them to join, they could just as easily call you, email you, or IM you. So you should have a couple of members for them to talk to also.

I have also found that some people do not quite remember about your board, which is why you need to write it down at a very subtle time and give it to them very subtly. If you just go to them and ask them to join your board like that, then they may not, they may come up with an excuse, so bring it about in a very subtle manner.

I agree that it can work, I have had my aunt and 5 of my real life friends join my forum because I asked them to very subtly.