Best way to bring in lots of members, fast!

[webjohn]

Did you try promoting your forum on reddit?

 

[okenyon]

Did you try promoting your forum on reddit?

No, have you had much luck with it?

 

[Shawn Gossman]

From you experience whats the best way to bring in lots of members and interaction on a new forum, fast?

I have budget and i'm happy to pay if necessary just looking for case studies on how to grow a forum quick?

To get a quick active community, the first thing you need to ask yourself is if you have the time to devote a lot of time to your new forum. It will require a lot of time devotion to it if you really want it to get bigger and more active at a faster rate. It isn't impossible but it will most likely be a significant challenge.

For the first few weeks, don't even think about getting the forum active. Spend the first few weeks researching... Find other forums in the niche and research them. Research what makes them active, what their members like the most of their forums and the unique features these forums are offering to have their competitive edge. Join the forum as a regular member and get active, this will do two things - (1) it will allow you to further research the competition and (2) it will allow you to start developing a reputation for your name which will come in handy later on with your own forum.

After you research, take your researched data (yes, write is all down) and develop a plan for your forum, preferably a strategic plan...identify goals and objectives for making the goals a success and decide how you are going to make your forum active really fast.

That is a good start to be honest

And of course, keep coming back to TAZ and asking for more help because we are here for you my friend!

 

[Timelord_]

Did you try promoting your forum on reddit?

How do you promote a forum on reddit? You mean submitting threads to a related subreddit?

 

[LeadCrow]

For results, by paying up for exposure.
- The official way is paying reddit for a prominent display across select sections/subreddits.
- A possibly better way is paying promotion groups to try securing highly visible reddit submissions linking to your forum.
- partner with subreddit staff to secure visibility, like in the sidebar or as a recommended authority in the relevant niche.

Forums in particular appear to have a very low attach rate though. Conflicting paradigms may explain that (redditors are fine with discovering new sources of material to read, and have little to no reason to join the discussion on another site when they can do it on reddit directly).

 

[Nat47]

Controversy.

Yep. Another way to say controversy is 'polarizing content.' It can be difficult to create this, but once you do, its golden. You might want to start off the discussion yourself with two or three 'fake' accounts.

 

[Timelord_]

For results, by paying up for exposure.
- The official way is paying reddit for a prominent display across select sections/subreddits.
- A possibly better way is paying promotion groups to try securing highly visible reddit submissions linking to your forum.
- partner with subreddit staff to secure visibility, like in the sidebar or as a recommended authority in the relevant niche.

Forums in particular appear to have a very low attach rate though. Conflicting paradigms may explain that (redditors are fine with discovering new sources of material to read, and have little to no reason to join the discussion on another site when they can do it on reddit directly).

Thats exactly what I thought. Reddit is very similar to a forum. Might be good for driving traffic, but not so good for creating a community (signups)

 

[bibitbunga]

The idea is that in the absence of ways to compel people to help you by seeding your forum with some starter content, money will make enough do it.

But it's generally not sustainable, and also creates its own need (people start expecting or demadnign payment in exchange for activity, and withhold it otherwise), so you can't depend on such mercenaries to become genuine members later.

Using gifts like Steam games is a lot less troublesome. You can tune your spending to the value of your contributors, and the relationship isnt skewed (paying money makes you the posters' customer, whereas offering gifts keeps you on top of the game, and subtly conditions their receiving gifts to building a lasting good bond with you).

I agree with LeadCrow. At first we got several active members from rewarding cash to signed up users. But as the reward program ends, most of them also never shows up again.

 

[arabicpoint]

Have a series of contests, each with a $1000 cash prize.

Forum URL PLZ

 

[bolo2491d]

So many leechers I've decided to lock the content so user has to spend point to see content