[blogtorank]

Ted great post sir!!!

Originally Posted by Ted S

None of the big boards I've ever worked for made it there overnight, or quickly for that matter. For most of them, they were in the right place at the right time and with the right set of features and approach to the whole community thing. 7 years ago, starting a forum was much easier than it is today but that doesn't mean it can't be done and done well.

The best method of promotion is doing whatever is necessary to build a core that promotes for you. Nothing beats word of mouth in marketing, no matter how much money you have. Right behind word of mouth is PR. PR can be free, or cost virtually nothing, yet yield huge results -- if you can leverage it. Beyond that throw every paid and free solution that's legal, ethical and that you can afford at your site to test them and keep the winners. For some sites free directory links does a lot, for others swapping articles, while some swear by AdWords and others can't get a member from it. The more you can target your marketing, the better it will convert but the more it will cost or more exclusive it tends to be. For these reasons you need to establish success metrics -- registration, views per visitor, ad revenue per visitor, posts per user, photo uploads, time on site, etc... Set your KPIs and start different campaigns. Anything paid should be measured to a t, anything free, measure as best you can and compare the results. No campaign works in a vacuum so plan to do more than one thing at once and don't stop.

Getting a critical mass immediately is vital to making your community succeed. You can be involved 24x7 for a short while but soon you'll get burned out as will your initial members, unless there's enough people to keep the site growing and building on its own. Once you have this established look for unique marketing angles to leverage be it custom content, local event marketing, print magazines, tv or radio, swaps with a local business, insertions into a video game, viral marketing with video, podcasts, whatever relates to your audience. Build things bit by bit and keep your KPIs in mind. As you grow more and more the grow rate should accelerate until you're a "big board".

Sounds easy, doesn't it?