How to get visitors to sign up & interact.

[makeouthill]

Hey guys, I have a gaming forum over at www.sorethumbs.boards.net and I personally think its a nice looking forum but whenever visitors come to the site they just don't sign up!

Ive got an incentive running at the minute where users can win gift cards but it doesn't seem to be helping! Any ideas of what to do to bring people and then getting them to stay an interact? I understand theres not much on there at the minute which may stop people coming but at the same time I can't just clutter it with posts for the sake of it because it'll look like just me talking to myself then which will also turn people away. 

Would love some feedback and suggestions. Thankyou

ps I have posted in the Proboards advertisement section etc.

[bigballofyarn]

Remember that not every visitor is a real person. I don't want you looking at your forum analytics and thinking that people are just looking at your forum and then clicking away. I get hundreds of bot visits every day. You don't want the bots to join your forum.

As for your gift card incentive, it honestly makes me think of those talking ads that say, "Click here for your free iPhone." It sounds clickbaity.

It looks like your forum was just created. New forums can take MONTHS to get off the ground. My best advice is to practice patience. Also, be open-minded. Be open to receiving opinions in the GOAYB section of Proboards Support. Don't take criticism personally. Not everyone will like your design. Be willing to try new things, and see what designs and ideas work for everyone.

No, don't make a bunch of topics, because you're right, I don't want to see a pile of topics with zero replies. Maybe you can have a friend join and help with some initial activity.

Patience is the key. Don't expect 100 people to sign up in the first month, but also don't delete your forum if it doesn't turn into an overnight success. Your forum will attract the right people at the right time.

Best of luck.

[Retread]

Jul 10, 2019 2:38:12 GMT -8 makeouthill said:

Any ideas of what to do to bring people and then getting them to stay an interact?

Getting people to visit, having them join, and having them interact, are three different things. You'll have a very small percentage of visitors who will actually join, and only some of those who join will participate (interact). This is true for every forum. As bigballofyarn noted, some of your guests will be search bots. But that's a good thing.

The ultimate goal of a forum might be to have conversations, or it might be a venue to present information. Or both. Ask yourself what purpose(s) your forum might serve and adjust your initial structure and content to steer visitors and members to the information base and conversational areas of your forum. You don't need to have the final structure in place. This might change substantially as your forum grows. But having logical grouping of subject matter is always a plus.

As your community grows, it's likely your membership will contribute greatly to the overall knowledge base you present to the general public. As the founder, you'll set the tone and establish patterns.

If you're a member in good standing on other forums, contact the staff of those forums and ask if you can put a link to your forum in your signature. Your participation in those forums and the link in your sig might bring others to your new forum.

I see you have an affiliates plugin on your forum and have made a thread in the Affiliate Exchange board on the Support Forum. That's good but (in my opinion) you're doing it wrong. You have BBCode rather than HTML for your affiliate code. BBCode is fine for posts and threads but in an affiliate table, HTML is needed. If you want to provide both, that's fine. But if you only have one version available, it should be HTML.

In addition to having your own thread, you should take the initiative to PM others who have threads in the Affiliate Exchange (if you haven't already done so).