Getting traffic to your forum...any suggestions?

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kaptanjak
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Getting traffic to your forum...any suggestions?

Post by kaptanjak »

Okay, so my forum is now up and running. Now how do I drive people to it? I set up a twitter account for my forum as well as a facebook page. What else should I be doing?
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KevC
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Re: Getting traffic to your forum...any suggestions?

Post by KevC »

2 big topics on it in this general discussion forum
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2365596

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=362219
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david63
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Re: Getting traffic to your forum...any suggestions?

Post by david63 »

As has been said many times before - content, content, content.

There is no shortcut to getting "traffic" - it takes time and you need to be patient, it will not happen overnight.
kaptanjak
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Re: Getting traffic to your forum...any suggestions?

Post by kaptanjak »

david63 wrote:As has been said many times before - content, content, content.

There is no shortcut to getting "traffic" - it takes time and you need to be patient, it will not happen overnight.
Content on forums is kind of a catch 22. You need members to post content, but you need content to attract members! Aaaarrrrrgggg! :?

It's like trying to get an egg without a chicken lol. :lol:

I'm mostly interested in social media and how that can be used to drive people to a forum. I don't have facebook or twitter for my personal use so I'm not really too familiar with them. Same with Google+.

I was wondering if anyone had any specific advice about using social media. The audience for my subject is huge, so those people are definitely out there. I've already got several hundred twitter followers in just a day who are super specific. So how would I go about making tweets that will grab their attention and get them to actually come on the site and create an account?

Right now I have 6 registered users who are currently beta testing the site. I'm going at this from the angle of "come help build a new forum" since I don't have any content yet. I'm hoping people will be attracted by the opportunity to kind of shape its development.
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Lumpy Burgertushie
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Re: Getting traffic to your forum...any suggestions?

Post by Lumpy Burgertushie »

I hate twitter and facebook etc.

however, you have to create the content to get started.

if you can't come up with content for whatever your subject matter is then your board is probably not going to do very well.

tweet about your content, put a link to you board in the tweets. do it again, and again, and again.

follow other twitter users with similar interests, retweet things about your subject etc.

go to other bulletin boards with a subject that draws your same audience, make informative posts, leave a link.


also, find some way to make your site/board better than all the other thousands out there that are about the same subject matter.

make sure your forum and topic titles are keyword rich for your subject matter.

if you do all of those things then after a time, you will get more members who will post more content etc. etc.



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Re: Getting traffic to your forum...any suggestions?

Post by AmigoJack »

If your content includes...
  1. dates, then use a format that search engines can find at all: "September 3, 2016" will definitly index the word and the year, whereas "9/3/16" is a nightmare to any search engine.
  2. products, use ASINs, ISBNs and similar IDs: in contrast to vague descriptions these are unique and can even be found in any language.
  3. names, then try to use all variations: at least use the romanized version as well as its true name. Examples:
    • "Takeshi Kitano" and "北野 武"
    • "Bar Refaeli" and "בר רפאלי"
    • "Maria Sharapova" and "Мария Шарапова"
    Both versions of the names are used/known to people, so using/mentioning only one of them won't be found by everybody.
  4. longer texts with paragraphs and headers, then define custom BBCodes that will provide you those relevant HTML elements (i.e. <h3>, <h4>, <p>...), as search engines also pick up the semantics of your content.
kaptanjak
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Re: Getting traffic to your forum...any suggestions?

Post by kaptanjak »

twitter seems to be working okay. I sent out a tweet today and immediately got 2 new people to sign up. Considering I only have 100 followers right now I think that's pretty good. I keep adding new followers everyday, so by the time I'm up to 2000 or so, then, if these numbers hold up, then I could expect to get 20 new users everytime I send out a tweet. Let's say 10% actually follow through and post something, that could translate into two regular users per day. After a while word of mouth and google indexing should begin to kick in. Fingers crossed!
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nimd4
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Re: Getting traffic to your forum...any suggestions?

Post by nimd4 »

Lumpy Burgertushie wrote:tweet about your content, put a link to you board in the tweets. do it again, and again, and again.
Can't, just, +1 the post here... Also your Google PageRank is (very) important, however it isn't the only search engine; there's a lot of affiliate work being done on Bing (especially), Yahoo and others.

AND, also, like Lumps said: the incoming links count (the most), it helps to have that page - which links to your site /pages /content - have a concentrated keyword count; BUT, without going into overdrive. It's really a dance, sort of. :)
roshanrakesh
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Re: Getting traffic to your forum...any suggestions?

Post by roshanrakesh »

If your forum lacks activity, pay some users to post and interact on the forum initially. Another good method is to run giveaways or promotions on your forums.
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Re: Getting traffic to your forum...any suggestions?

Post by unisoftdev »

I've got 41K Twitter followers, but it doesn't have any influence on the activity on my forum. I could make 1000 tweets and it doesn't change basically anything. Twitter isn't worth as much as Facebook, or Reddit.
Check out how much followers I've on my Twitter pages. It's not worth.
  • Invite your friends, collages, grandfather and anybody else if you're not ashamed to say about the forum. First, you are creating a community and need a topics yet before when any strangers will come. None stranger is gonna write if will see an empty websites.
  • If you post an url link for some small website, they can see it in Google and Bing Webmaster Tools. They will come to check what is written about them and more provocative means better. If you'll create 1000 links on websites, which are discussed, then they will come to debate about themselves.
  • Website critics, or direct promotions?
  • Create seriously provocative topics, where people can't really stay away. There're lobbying groups of volunteers like in Greenpeace, feminists and politic organizations, which are very inclining to discuss if they'll see a proper bullshit.
dkauzlaric
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Re: Getting traffic to your forum...any suggestions?

Post by dkauzlaric »

SEO - building backlinks! That is how we have always done it. Make sure your topics are searchable and indexable by Google.
kaptanjak
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Re: Getting traffic to your forum...any suggestions?

Post by kaptanjak »

I'm trying to build backlinks right now. It's very difficult to get people to respond, although when they do they're usually willing to help. It's just getting them to actually read the email in the first place.

Couldn't agree more about Twitter. I think I've given them more publicity that they've given me. I could never figure out what twitter was good for in the first place.
GoesOn
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Re: Getting traffic to your forum...any suggestions?

Post by GoesOn »

kaptanjak wrote: Tue Jun 20, 2017 6:48 pm I'm trying to build backlinks right now. It's very difficult to get people to respond, although when they do they're usually willing to help. It's just getting them to actually read the email in the first place.

Couldn't agree more about Twitter. I think I've given them more publicity that they've given me. I could never figure out what twitter was good for in the first place.
One question, what is backlink good for? Then how does twitter help a forum?
English is not my native language :!:
GoesOn
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Re: Getting traffic to your forum...any suggestions?

Post by GoesOn »

dkauzlaric wrote: Tue Jun 20, 2017 5:08 pm SEO - building backlinks! That is how we have always done it. Make sure your topics are searchable and indexable by Google.
How are they made searchable and indexed by Google?
English is not my native language :!:
kaptanjak
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Re: Getting traffic to your forum...any suggestions?

Post by kaptanjak »

GoesOn wrote: Wed Jun 21, 2017 7:56 pm
kaptanjak wrote: Tue Jun 20, 2017 6:48 pm I'm trying to build backlinks right now. It's very difficult to get people to respond, although when they do they're usually willing to help. It's just getting them to actually read the email in the first place.

Couldn't agree more about Twitter. I think I've given them more publicity that they've given me. I could never figure out what twitter was good for in the first place.
One question, what is backlink good for? Then how does twitter help a forum?
Backlinks basically are what search engines use to rank your site. Each backlink is seen as kind of a vote for your site.

Well that's the big question. I'm beginning to wonder why Twitter even exists. You would think it would be a good tool for promoting just about anything, but it seems to be virtually useless in that regard.
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