How to promote new message forums?

Writing in news:alt.www.webmaster
From the safety of the cafeteria
John <johnnyman307.RemoveThis@hotmail.moc> said:

> I want to set up a forum message board web site, but I don't know how to
> get
> activity started once it's up and running.

Host a party in an internet cafe. Offers prizes for relevant thingies.

o first post
o post that generates most replies
o longest post
o etc .......

--
William Tasso

virtue is its own punishment
 >> Stay informed about: How to promote new message forums? 

Charles Sweeney wrote:

> rf wrote
>
>> John wrote:
>>
>>> I want to set up a forum message board web site, but I don't know how
>>> to get activity started once it's up and running.
>>>
>>> What are the best ways to drive traffic and get people to register
>>> and participate in a brand new message board?
>>
>> Did you not factor this into the business plan when you decided to
>> build the site?
>
> What's a "business plan"?

It's a, er, it's a...

A few years ago our Accountant wanted us to provide him with a

Q: Budget?

A: We get money when somebody buys our product.

A2: We spend it when we a) eat, b) ski.

--
Cheers
Richard.
 >> Stay informed about: How to promote new message forums? 

"rf" <rf.DeleteThis@invalid.com> wrote in message
news:2nhqyjzn6jmb.1qus8l901s38d.dlg@40tude.net...
> John wrote:
>
>> I want to set up a forum message board web site, but I don't know how to
>> get
>> activity started once it's up and running.
>>
>> What are the best ways to drive traffic and get people to register and
>> participate in a brand new message board?
>
> Did you not factor this into the business plan when you decided to build
> the site?
>
> What's it about anyway? (You can now provide the URL).
>
> --
> Cheers
> Richard.

The site doesn't exist yet, but it will be a community/regional message
board designed mostly for residents of the city and surrounding area to talk
about what's happening locally and maybe post classified ads and comment on
local businesses, restaurants, contractors etc. they recommend and don't
recommend. I checked and one doesn't already exist covering the area, which
I found very surprising because some smaller cities have quite active
message forums with hundreds of registered users and hundreds of posts per
day after being online for several years.
I want to make sure it gets off to a strong start or someone or some
business will see it, take the idea and make another similar site that will
kill mine before it has any major popularity.
I'm going to start on one of the free forum hosting sites, then if the board
gets active enough to attract advertisers, move it to a paid hosting site
and get ads that will pay enough to at least cover the hosting/bandwidth
costs. Later I want it to make bigger money than just covering hosting
expenses.
 >> Stay informed about: How to promote new message forums? 

On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 09:22:09 -0700, "John" <johnnyman307.RemoveThis@hotmail.moc>
scrawled:

> The site doesn't exist yet, but it will be a community/regional message
> board designed mostly for residents of the city and surrounding area to talk
> about what's happening locally and maybe post classified ads and comment on
> local businesses, restaurants, contractors etc. they recommend and don't
> recommend. I checked and one doesn't already exist covering the area, which
> I found very surprising because some smaller cities have quite active
> message forums with hundreds of registered users and hundreds of posts per
> day after being online for several years.
> I want to make sure it gets off to a strong start or someone or some
> business will see it, take the idea and make another similar site that will
> kill mine before it has any major popularity.
> I'm going to start on one of the free forum hosting sites, then if the board
> gets active enough to attract advertisers, move it to a paid hosting site
> and get ads that will pay enough to at least cover the hosting/bandwidth
> costs. Later I want it to make bigger money than just covering hosting
> expenses.

Word of mouth (seriously). Photocopied notices at the library, stores
(especially those who might want to be mentioned there), schools,
stapled to phone poles. Write a press release for all the local
papers (daily and weekly). Write letters to the editors of same. Ask
local PTAs to mention it in school bulletins as a way for parents to
share info.

As other people may have suggested, seed it with a few starter posts
before announcing it, so people don't just show up, see that it's
empty and leave.

Ask local stores if they would like free advertising for the first
month if it includes a coupon for your site and they put up a notice
saying "get a 10% off coupon for Storename if you visit forumname."

You get the idea.

--
MGW
If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've
always got.
 >> Stay informed about: How to promote new message forums? 

"MGW" <mgw1979 DeleteThis @hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:8f32m1poqo42josnoakuh2jdr1ogscjl9v@4ax.com...
> On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 09:22:09 -0700, "John" <johnnyman307 DeleteThis @hotmail.moc>
> scrawled:
>
>> The site doesn't exist yet, but it will be a community/regional message
>> board designed mostly for residents of the city and surrounding area to
>> talk
>> about what's happening locally and maybe post classified ads and comment
>> on
>> local businesses, restaurants, contractors etc. they recommend and don't
>> recommend. I checked and one doesn't already exist covering the area,
>> which
>> I found very surprising because some smaller cities have quite active
>> message forums with hundreds of registered users and hundreds of posts
>> per
>> day after being online for several years.
>> I want to make sure it gets off to a strong start or someone or some
>> business will see it, take the idea and make another similar site that
>> will
>> kill mine before it has any major popularity.
>> I'm going to start on one of the free forum hosting sites, then if the
>> board
>> gets active enough to attract advertisers, move it to a paid hosting site
>> and get ads that will pay enough to at least cover the hosting/bandwidth
>> costs. Later I want it to make bigger money than just covering hosting
>> expenses.
>
> Word of mouth (seriously). Photocopied notices at the library, stores
> (especially those who might want to be mentioned there), schools,
> stapled to phone poles. Write a press release for all the local
> papers (daily and weekly). Write letters to the editors of same. Ask
> local PTAs to mention it in school bulletins as a way for parents to
> share info.
>
> As other people may have suggested, seed it with a few starter posts
> before announcing it, so people don't just show up, see that it's
> empty and leave.
>
> Ask local stores if they would like free advertising for the first
> month if it includes a coupon for your site and they put up a notice
> saying "get a 10% off coupon for Storename if you visit forumname."
>
> You get the idea.
>
> --
> MGW
> If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've
> always got.

One thing I'm concerned about is if it does get popular and I want to move
it to a paid hosting site so I have control over the advertising and get
that revenue, am I going to lose all the old posts and have to have all the
members reregister for new accounts? That would be a major disruption and
the new site would be of less value without all the old archives messages
available for searches.
I want to start it out on www.forumforfree.com and mask forward my domain
URL there. When I want to move to a new host, I can just forward the URL
somewhere else.
 >> Stay informed about: How to promote new message forums? 

This message is not archived
 >> Stay informed about: How to promote new message forums? 

On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 16:12:23 +0200, Els <els.aNOSPAM.DeleteThis@tiscali.nl> wrote:

>Matt Probert wrote:
>
>> On 27 Oct 2005 10:00:37 GMT, Charles Sweeney <me.DeleteThis@charlessweeney.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Normally this is done through advertising. Figure out where your
>>> prospective visitors are, then put an ad in front of them.
>>
>> On a board hung around the neck of a naked, nubile young woman is very
>> effective. So long as her assets don't detract too much from the
>> advertising text ! <g>
>
>I think the size of that board is most important.
Depends if you let her out of doors or not.
 >> Stay informed about: How to promote new message forums? 

On 27 Oct 2005 22:36:25 GMT, Charles Sweeney <me.TakeThisOut@charlessweeney.com> wrote:
[snip]
>>
>> One thing I'm concerned about is if it does get popular and I want to
>> move it to a paid hosting site so I have control over the advertising
>> and get that revenue, am I going to lose all the old posts and have to
>> have all the members reregister for new accounts? That would be a
>> major disruption and the new site would be of less value without all
>> the old archives messages available for searches.
>> I want to start it out on www.forumforfree.com and mask forward my
>> domain URL there. When I want to move to a new host, I can just
>> forward the URL somewhere else.
>
>If you are halfway serious about this, get a paid host, or give up.
You can get paid hosting for 5 USD a month. If you can't afford even that,
you're in the wrong area, m'friend.
 >> Stay informed about: How to promote new message forums? 

"Charles Sweeney" wrote:
> Good stuff. My advice would be not to ask for advice!

My advice is to ignore Charles' advice.

No, not really. It's good to get different points of view. Personally,
I've gotten some good ideas from this thread. You need to decide which
ones may work for you, of course, but IMO it's good to ask for advice
and then listen.

Lois
--
www.wordsweave.com
 >> Stay informed about: How to promote new message forums? 

Writing in news:alt.www.webmaster
From the safety of the wordsweave.com cafeteria
Lois <auto-newsgroups.RemoveThis@wordsweave.com> said:

> "Charles Sweeney" wrote:
>> Good stuff. My advice would be not to ask for advice!
>
> My advice is to ignore Charles' advice.
>
> No, not really. It's good to get different points of view. Personally,
> I've gotten some good ideas from this thread. You need to decide which
> ones may work for you, of course, but IMO it's good to ask for advice
> and then listen.

and then make up your own mind

--
William Tasso

virtue is its own punishment
 >> Stay informed about: How to promote new message forums? 

"MGW" <mgw1979.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:8f32m1poqo42josnoakuh2jdr1ogscjl9v@4ax.com...
> On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 09:22:09 -0700, "John" <johnnyman307.RemoveThis@hotmail.moc>
> scrawled:
>
>> >
> Word of mouth (seriously). Photocopied notices at the library, stores
> (especially those who might want to be mentioned there), schools,
> stapled to phone poles. Write a press release for all the local
> papers (daily and weekly). Write letters to the editors of same. Ask
> local PTAs to mention it in school bulletins as a way for parents to
> share info.
>
> As other people may have suggested, seed it with a few starter posts
> before announcing it, so people don't just show up, see that it's
> empty and leave.
>
> Ask local stores if they would like free advertising for the first
> month if it includes a coupon for your site and they put up a notice
> saying "get a 10% off coupon for Storename if you visit forumname."
>
> You get the idea.
>
> --
> MGW
> If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've
> always got.

So now I have the basics of the site set up, but no content yet.
I want to get local business people and merchants to buy banner ads, but I
suppose I will need to give the ads away for free to get started since it
will take time for the site to have enough visitors for businesses to be
willing to pay. I can also fill space with self-promotional banner ads and
"Your Ad Here" type banners that can be replaced with paid ads later.
Before I start trying to find customers for banner ads, I need to learn how
to make banner ads and how to make the ads rotate either every few seconds
or every page refresh.
Are there highly recommended tools that automate creation of banner ads for
people with little knowlege of html or other programming?
The ads will need to inserted into a vBulletin 3.5 message forum.
 >> Stay informed about: How to promote new message forums? 

Lois wrote:
>> It's good to get different points of view. Personally,
>> I've gotten some good ideas from this thread. You need to decide
>> which
>> ones may work for you, of course, but IMO it's good to ask for
>> advice
>> and then listen.

"William Tasso" added:
> and then make up your own mind

Oh yeah. Forgot that part.

Lois
--
www.wordsweave.com
 >> Stay informed about: How to promote new message forums?