[legionofangels]

Originally Posted by Ted S

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".

I've actually heard the opposite of your first statement there.

I've heard that growing a forum board can take up to 2 to 3 years perhaps. So I don't understand how it's vital to immediately have mass members there.

Granted I do notice some burn out, or not really that, but just inactivity of some, but at the same time our activity in general overall is consistent.

My question initially is, since tv or radio and such is highly unlikely due to probably high costs of advertising. What is the first best step one could do to market there forum?

SEO?

Google Adwords?

Or do I look for other outlets of advertising?

I'd like to get started on this and kind of refresh upon my existing or initial growth. I'd like to know the next best step basically in getting started.