Forum Marketing - Advertising Your New Forum

Advertising a new forum in the online community must be handled very well in order to succeed. What are the best ways to get active members to participate in your forum and how are you going to do it?

In order to find the right group of members, start searching from other forums that revolve around the same content area as your forum is one of the best way to find members but it can also cost you if it's not handled correctly.

You see, no one will like a forum administrator to walk into their forum and steal members. No one will appreciate what you have just done in the community and unless you are extremely smart about it, it will only take one day for you to be banned from these other forums.

Image Credit:nurseynicole

I would like to warn those who are having ideas of dropping an email or private message(PM) to the respective members of a more established forum telling them to join your new forum. It is one of the most unethical ways of recruiting members to your forum and it's considered spamming which everyone hates!

My personal Experience
I was once a moderator for a forum and i received a PM from a member with less than 2 post, telling me to check out his new forum "Hi check out my forum(with a link)!", That was all his message was, no introduction nor was there anything i can read on. I slapped that member with a ban for 2 weeks but the forum administrator thinks such members should be given a lifetime ban so without hesitation a lifetime ban was slapped on that member.

Image Credit:freezelight

Another big mistake that many members make when trying to advertise their new forum is to create multiple threads on all categories and spam the forum with a link to their new forum. Let me tell you, this just annoys the members who are in that forum for a long time and the very next moment, your account will be ban for life. Some forums do allow other members to advertise their own website, forum in a freebie or link board.

Advertise your forum - the right way
Always read the rules and regulations before you start posting. Every forum have their own rules. This is to prevent you from getting banned working on those members to join your new forum. Today I am going to talk about how to advertise your forum correctly.

1. Member Profile. Most of the forum do allow you to place your website on your profile. This is a good way to advertise your website or forum the ethical way. Any members who views your profile will surely come across your website so if they are interested, they will visit the link to be directed to your forum.
   
   
2. Show others you are helpful. Post actively with valuable resources and always be helpful to others. If someone talks to you through a PM, let them know you are on MSN or Skype which you can answer them more effectively. Once the conversation has moved off the forum you can ask them to join your forum without fear of breaking a forum rule. If you have them on your instant messenger list you can start building a relationship with them.
   
   
3. Building your reputation. As a forum administrator, you should be posting more often on your own forum than others, but again you need to balance your frequency of posting on other forums to build rapport and trust. Make sure your posts at the other forum are always informative and helpful to the members there. Spamming post will not make them want to see what is going on at your forum.
   
   
4. Signature link. Most of the forums allows links to be placed at your signature board. The more you post on the forum, the chances of your forum link getting exposed will be great and you might end up with more members over time.
   
   
5. Contacting the Forum administrator. Build up your reputation in the forum and start to contact the forum administrator and introduce yourself. Try to ask whether the administrator can introduce a group of active members to join you in the setup of your new forum. If you approach the administrator directly, chances are you will get stubbed otherwise the administrator might just let his moderator help you in setting up your forum if he sees potential in it.
   
   
6. Purchase Paid Reviews. One way to spread your forum presences is through paid review. You can head down to reviewme to look for your ideal blog to review your forum.
   
   
7. Purchase Adspace. If you want your banner to be on the front fold of a website or blog for maximium exposure then buying an adspace is the most ideal way of getting more visitor converting to members.
   

Tyler had mentioned on his blog that publisherforums were being advertised on threads with the permission of the other forum admin and also doing a number of paid reviews in order to boost the number of members on his forum, do you have a trick up your sleeve that you want to share, leave a comment cause i would love to hear from you.


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