Promotion of a forum

Promotion of a forum is an important stage of its development as a newly fledged forum cannot become a popular Internet community on its own account. You will have to make effort to achieve its popularity.

A forum on the Internet is a place where users can discuss any burning or just interesting questions, seek advice, boast or, on the contrary, cry on somebody's shoulder. The main function of a forum is to provide communication. Very often virtual communication on popular forums grows into real communication with collective picnics and regular meetings of the participants of a certain forum.

Promotion of a forum presupposes a certain algorithm of actions. Thanks to this algorithm the forum will quicken. An empty forum with the only topic – “Forum testing” – is a very sorry sight.

A forum may position itself as a separate independent resource or as a part of a site devoted to the same subject. That is why one of the essential preconditions for successful promotion of a forum is clear shaping of the main tasks the forum will perform. Should it attract visitors to a site it is connected with? Will this forum be highly specialized or should it embrace various spheres of the human activity?

While creating a forum in accord with the chosen topic or attaching it to your site you should take care of proper web design of your forum – it should be nice-looking and unobtrusive. If a forum is a part of a site, its design should support the design of the parent site – they should look as a whole.

When you open a new forum, do not create a lot of threads and sections at once – they will make it look even emptier. On the contrary, the initial number of branches should be very small. Necessary threads will eventually split off themselves during development of the forum.

Inconvenience of the forum may become a serious obstacle for its promotion. Complicated registration, a lot of CAPTCHAs, various bugs may frighten the users off. To prevent it you should carry out usability testing of the forum before placing it in the Internet. For this purpose you can invite friends or order professional testing.

By the way, friends can be your best assistants in promotion of a forum. They can become the backbone of the forum and spread advertising of the forum on the Internet and offline.

If the forum is a part of the site, it is useful to place interesting and informative articles on the site, and then offer the users to discuss them on the forum. You also can allow the users of the site to comment articles, and then transfer their comments to the forum.

The most complicated task of promotion of a forum is to attract the first visitors as there are no topics for discussion on a newly created forum. That is why your task is to choose interesting articles and notes and post them on your forum. You can also raise a burning question. If users do not hurry to discuss different topics, the authors of the forum will have to post the first comments and messages themselves using various nicknames.

The task of the authors is to maintain the currency of the topics on the forum. For this purpose they should create new topics as well as maintain old discussions by taking an active part in them and even provoking heated discussions of the vital issues. By the way, a heated discussion is one of the best way to keep a certain topic on your forum on the boil. If a certain topic contain many controversial opinions and statements, almost every new user will want to put in his or her two cents' worth.

However heated discussions must not develop into the streams of personal insults (flame) or messages which are not related to the topic under discussion (flood). It is better to create a special thread for those users who want to chat about different things. If users want to have something out with one another, they should use private messages (PM).

Different competitions and ratings are effective methods of promotion of a forum. Competitive excitement evoked by such events provokes the users to take a more active part in discussions. The victory in the contest or the first place in the rating should be awarded by a prize. The prize can be both material (a delicious cake, a case of beer – it depends on the audience of the forum) and nonmaterial.

The forum will gradually grow, and it will become more difficult to keep order. That is why you can offer active participants of the forum to become moderators – participants who are empowered to punish misbehaving users. A moderator is an honorable position, that is why other participants of the forum will also strive for it, therefore they will visit your forum more actively.

TAGS
promotion of a forum, forum, forum development