How To Build A Successful Forum

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Sanguine As a new user, I love that you are doing this! Thank you!

MikeJones

Sanguine How much did you pay for those Google Adwords? And how did you pick search terms?

Sanguine

MikeJones $50 or so.. I analyzed similar forums for keyword density and picked those

Cjcrux

'Promotion' Is The Key

Pollux

Sanguine $50 or so.. I analyzed similar forums for keyword density and picked those

Would you consider your advertisement a success? How many new registered users did you pick up with $50?

Sanguine

Pollux It certainly failed, as I had zero signups. Perhaps my base content was not convincing enough, or the intended audience didn't fit an online forum. Anyway, I quit my endeavors and started Free Flarum instead.

Pollux

Sanguine It certainly failed, as I had zero signups.

That was always my expectation.

Perhaps my base content was not convincing enough, or the intended audience didn't fit an online forum.

I ask myself what would make me register in a forum. And the answer is simple: It's the kind of discussions I could have. If a forum has vivid discussions about interesting topics with funny and thoughtful users I will be tempted to register and participate. If a forum is empty with only a handful unwitty users that write once in a fortnight... no thank you.

So you need good discussions to attract people who could participate in good discussions. But how do you get the whole thing started? That's tough.

One possible path is if you know already a couple of interesting people and they are interested to join a new platform. In this case these people know what to expect even if nothing is visible yet.

Another path is if you yourself can write such an outstanding content, that people are willing to register just to talk with you. Over time discussions between your members will develop too, but in the beginning everything depends of you and you alone.

MikeJones

Pollux that is essentially what I am attempting... Write really good content and hope one or two people join in.

I joined adwords to help speed that up. We shall see!

Pollux

MikeJones

I really like your approach and your dedication, your seek adventure forum is awesome.

Instead of or parallel to adwords I would actively look for people who might be interested to share their trips in your forum. Are you active in other forums yourself? Do you know people from there who could contribute? Funny adventurous people, awesome photographers, people with an enthralling writing style? Try to lure them to your forum. And if the first other users have arrived, care for them, engage with them, show your dedication without looking like a control freak.

MikeJones

Pollux I do participate in one other outdoor forum but I don't want to advertise in there. I don't want them to think I am poaching...

I also participate in reddit a lot and have recieved a lot of traffic from there but no registered users.

Pollux

MikeJones I do participate in one other outdoor forum but I don't want to advertise in there.

Great, and that's not what you should consider. Nobody likes advertisement, not for commercial purposes and not for competing websites. I thought more about people with whome you have developed a personal bond, people you have already contacted by email or other means beside the forum, people you have probably already met in real life.

If you can find three or four other likeminded souls who see your forum as their own project too, that's worth more than twenty people who have registered due to your advertisement. Registration in your forum is not the endpoint. People engaging with meaningful content, people seeing your forum as one of their homes in the internet, people enjoying to engage with you, that's the endpoint. I have one member in my forum I learnt to know in another forum 15 years ago and we still enjoy our conversations.

I like your forum because it has a real purpose (and an interesting one), a foundation for meaningful content, a basis to have fun together. Now you need to find some people who want to share their experience with you. Not a lot of them, but the right ones. Why not ask someone from your family, some of your real life friends, people you have met on one of your trips?

Henryson

MikeJones Maybe Your Sign Up Button is Hidden Or Hard To Find, The easier for users to register the better.

MikeJones

Pollux Thanks for all the great suggestions I will definitely take them to heart and I am glad you like the content I have on Seek Adventure so far!

luceos

MikeJones I'm also consistently intrigued by your forum. Would it be an idea for you to create a dedicated discussion here to work like a blog thread (or use medium) talking about your installation, choices (extensions etc) and hosting? I'm very curious to hear more about experiences people have with Flarum.

Prosperous

I like it a lot as well! You've got a good set up @MikeJones so keep up the motivation and your forum will be a success in itself. It sorta reminds me of Bear Grylls, especially with the colour scheming too. ? Good on the eyes and it works really well with the dark theme you've got going.

MikeJones

After running a Google Ad campaign, I feel like it didn't get any new users to join up and participate.

I have been going to other like sites and participating and slowly building links (trying not to be spammy), I have found a lot of my posts on my site can answer questions people ask on Reddit and have had some success answering questions with links. This has slowly built up the number of searches Seek Adventure has been appearing in.

Since I personally don't click on many Ads on Google myself after searching, I decided to dump that path and try Facebook Ads and create a Facebook page where I will post interesting discussions going on in my Flarum.

I find I click on many more Facebook ads than Google Ads and I think The Facebook ads will better showcase my Photography skills and at least catch some new users eyes while they browse Facebook. RIght now I am just trying a one day "Boosted Post" for $20. Will let you all know how it goes.

You can check out my first Boosted post on my page here: https://www.facebook.com/SeekAdventure

luceos

MikeJones perhaps it would be interesting if you could post to twitter; this could eventually even be automated for every post in a specific tag. Getting traction with an audience might be a slow gain but I think that it might be a very stable source eventually..

MikeJones

luceos I have a twitter account too, haven't had to much luck there but trying all the avenues!

luceos

MikeJones i've also recently discovered http://storychief.io/ which offers an api. You could write there and use their api to sync it to your forum while also publishing articles on medium, twitter, facebook, mail campaigns etc.. There are bound to be alternatives, but getting decent reach is always a fight; tools like these automate your publishing processes and can help you gain traction too.

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