How to get more visitors to forum ?

[duncan320]

Hi, looking for a way to get more visitors to our forum. It covers a wide range of topics from general PC support questions, to telecoms, networking and electronics. Currently have low amount of members but would like more. What is the best way any ideas ?

We have a link to it from our main home page and few other pages also.

Looking for ideas, dont want to spam post it about other forums though.

Thanks

[Vish]

Hi, looking for a way to get more visitors to our forum. It covers a wide range of topics from general PC support questions, to telecoms, networking and electronics. Currently have low amount of members but would like more. What is the best way any ideas ?

We have a link to it from our main home page and few other pages also.

Looking for ideas, dont want to spam post it about other forums though.

Thanks

1. Discuss quality topic on board. (use keywords in topic title)

2. Use permalinks in forum.

3. Do social bookmarking

4. And do not spam or use copy past content in forum

[duncan320]

Thanks, i guess point number 1 depends on what the users ask in the forums really, once there is a lot of members then there will be more topics and more for google etc to find resulting in more forum members who find it when looking for stuff.

[Leya B]

Make sure you use the correct keywords on your pages. If a page is about telecoms make sure you say it in the text. You would be surprised with the ammount of people who do not actually use any of the words that matter in their pages descriptions.

[horseclick]

what I do:

social bookmarking
blog commenting
forum posting (signature)
run a contest or giveaway

cheers,
Horse Classifieds

[heronfisher]

The best way to get more traffic is just keep patience and spread your brand name throughout with every single thing you can do wear it, gift it to others, write it wherever you think people will be able to notice it anything just let others know you are there and believe me they will come to you!

[arnoldsmithh]

I totally agree with all your points.

[alfredbond]

Here some ways that help also.

1.) never send out email for the site to visitors unless you give them a warning in your forums first. other wise they will just think your spamming there email and not join or recommend others not to join.

2.) keep everythign on your site simple. People dont liek complicated thing, big long sentences and stuff.

3.) do not add stuff to the home page of your site that starts to autoplay music and stuff. People dont like this. it may slow them down. keep it on a seprate page.

4.)never ever go to a site where you can buy peopel to join your site. they can spam up your forums then no one will come to your site.

5.) keep the rules simple and to the point. give people chances. trust there decisions, and keep spamming to a minumal.

6.) make shure your moderators arn't abusing there power. people dont liek this and will leave as the resut and suggest people to not come and join your site.

7.) make your site about more than one thing. peopel like chooses. it can also hel t attract other people to your forums. Exampel your forum is about cars, put down and anime/manga section. Then people from the anime/manga world will come and join up with ya.

[jackbency]

These three way can help you Link exchange, Buy Banners/Links, Increase your backlinks. keep everything on your site simple. People don't like complicated thing, big long sentences and stuff. Do not add stuff to the home page of your site that starts to autoplay music and stuff. People don't like this. it may slow them down. keep it on a separate page.

[Dan321]

Backlinks are also a great way of getting your ranks up in google. Ask different websites if you can exchange links (preferably PR1 and above)

[paul]

Add threads on popular topics, start up some contest and give out prizes.

[petey]

Well, most of the techniques have already been discussed here, however in addition to the discussed techniques I would like to put a point. Many of the newbies by reading others comments and articles on different websites wonders that commenting only on dofollow blogs can benefit the websites. Undoubtedly, the dofollow blog comments can benefit you to gain high PR, while the commenting on nofollow blogs can drive really massive traffic to the websites. Everyone is aware of the fact that blogs drives much more traffic than a website.

[Veronica]

In my opinion it is very important to access the interests of the blog visitors before starting a thread. If the forum includes threads that hold the interests of the visitors, then they will be surely drawn to the thread. This is an easy way of gathering more crowd to the forums. It is also important to have a huge number of threads running so that everyone finds the topic of their interest.

[onlinemedia]

1. Discuss quality topic on board. (use keywords in topic title)

2. Use permalinks in forum.

3. Do social bookmarking

4. And do not spam or use copy past content in forum

The first point you told about how to increase traffic on forum was good. I most of the time see things like this by making keywords of your forum or any webpage to the title of your post get good response.

[jakson0100]

Most the forums I visit have interesting content. Something that I was looking for. That or they are so popular already that it's easy to find and get involved. That doesn't help you seeing as your site isn't popular or have relevant content or you wouldn't be asking the question.

Why not build a blog to go with your forum? Or build a plugin or theme that could launch the forum? The cash prize idea - would work in an ideal world but since it's not an ideal world most people will think that you are spam. It would seem like super duech spam.

So don't do that.

Now if you want to give away prizes on Twitter to get people there, I think that would seem like the normal way to go since lots of people do that now without it seeming spamming although don't you want people who will stick around and not just want free stuff?

Be helpful. Write a blog. Ask friends to write questions and then answer them to bring in new visitors.

Make a few youtube videos and ask users who have more questions to ask them on your forum.