Web 2.0 Mar­ket­ing Tip #50: Go and Multiply!

Fo­rums are a great medium for con­nect­ing with peo­ple who share sim­i­lar in­ter­ests and thoughts as you; they are great places to es­tab­lish con­nec­tions and get cus­tomers. That is ex­actly why it can be very ben­e­fi­cial to start your own fo­rums, even though it en­tails quite a lot of work. How­ever, just be­cause you have al­ready suc­ceeded in cre­at­ing a fo­rum does not mean your work is al­ready done. Rather, it is just the beginning.

Top Ways to Get Fo­rum Members

Nu­mer­ous fo­rums are be­ing cre­ated every day, and a lot of them be­gin and end as ghost fo­rums--fo­rums no­body have heard of and fo­rums no­body caresabout. Why? This is be­cause the their own­ers never take the time to pop­u­late them, to en­sure that there are hun­dreds of mem­ber who con­tin­u­ously post and par­tic­i­pate in discussion.

If you want your fo­rum to be suc­cess­ful, you will have to take the time to pop­u­late it with in­di­vid­u­als who will en­gage in lively dis­cus­sions and who will help you reach more peo­ple by pro­mot­ing it in other plat­forms like their blogs and so­cial net­work­ing accounts.

There are sev­eral ways to find hun­dreds of new mem­bers for your newly cre­ated  fo­rum. Let us look at some of the best methods:

1. Cre­ate threads on the fo­rum about im­por­tant top­ics in your niche. Since new vis­i­tors will find that the fo­rum is empty, they will be hes­i­tant to post. How­ever, if there is at least one other per­son post­ing threads, they may take the time to re­spond. That said, it is es­sen­tial for you to cre­ate new threads and post about spe­cific top­ics about your niche. You can  even cre­ate an­other spare ac­count to en­cour­age oth­ers to start posting.
2. Pull fo­rum mem­bers from blogs and fo­rums. What bet­ter places to get new mem­bers for your fo­rums than in places where in­di­vid­u­als al­ready en­gage in ac­tive dis­cus­sions? Find blogs and fo­rums where there are mem­bers ac­tively post­ing and so­licit them for your fo­rum in­di­rectly. You can do this by fre­quently post­ing, giv­ing rel­e­vant and qual­ity info, and in­clud­ing a sig­na­ture with your fo­rum and blog posts that links to your forum.

Once you start get­ting new mem­bers, re­mem­ber that you will have to keep them en­gaged if you want to re­tain them. Oth­er­wise, you will soon find new mem­bers leav­ing your fo­rum one af­ter an­other. So, as you step up your pro­mo­tion ef­forts, re­mem­ber to si­mul­ta­ne­ously scale up your fo­rum en­gage­ment efforts.