Getting new members

[faisj]

Hi everyone,

I was wondering; what would you suggest to improve my forum.
Getting it more active:

http://www.twentyfourforum.com/

kind regards,

Faisj

 

[Damion]

Hi Faisj, these are some points i copied and pasted a while back to keep in mind for generating forum traffic:

1. find a niche topic that does attract you and others
2. find a couple (lets say three) persons who agree to help on the project
3. offer incentives to users who do actively participate / e.g. post rank /access to restricted areas
4. create badges, e-mail footers and forum signatures to market your forum and get back-links
5. enter the website into as many directories as possible to create direct traffic and yupp again back-links
6. be real! Don’t use the Username admin and a Dilbert avatar, instead use a real picture and your name
7. be active in other forums and add value to them – people reading your posts are likely to click your signature >>
8. do competitions and you will be amazed how much people are willing to do for a 20$ gadget
9. send a newsletter /at least/ every month
10. don’t be too strict with guidelines / rules / your community should really like hanging out at your spot
11. give the project & community 2 to 4 years to develop

Also link building is key to attract traffic and i would advise to read a lot on that subject.
Here is a good article to start out with

And this may sound stupid but create multiple usernames and start talking to yourself, ask questions, answer questions.
This way the search engines pick up activity and are more inclined to crawl your forum more hopefully resulting in better SERP's for your forum. Which results in more traffic.

 

[faisj]

Thanks Damion, but the problem is that most the 24 forum fans are
scattered around 5 small forums and 2 bigger once. (official forum and a free
forum)

The complete community is not able to find the main forum.
Thats why I made my forum.

 

[Damion]

Creating forum signatures is a way to get noticed on these forums you mentioned if these aren't yours

 

[Fewski]

Like Damion, join the other forums and put the link in your sig and post a bit.

Create multiple users and 'talk to yourself' - no one wants to join a new forum. Get it started and keep it active by doing this until more people join then slowly stop posting on the fake users.

 

[forumGuru]

Absolutely correct. It's an unfortunate truth, but nobody wants to join a new forum. You could also take up a paid posting service, but if you take that route make sure that they provide quality and care about your forum. If they do, you will not regret it.