I'm a huge fan of developing online communities for revenue generation.
The wonderful thing about community sites is that the members create the content for you.
However, it can sometimes be tricky to kickstart your forums in order to get people posting.
If you launch forums and people visit only to find that there is no activity, odds are they aren't going to register, post or return.
This is the primary reason most forums don't get off the grounds.
There are a few things you can do to populate your message boards with content. Some options are less desirable than others.
1) You can recruit a few friends to help you get conversations started. If you can get a dozen or so people to interact and post on a daily basis for a few weeks, you would be in a more favorable position to see new signups coming your way. Make the conversation interesting and engaging so others will want to join the fun. This is a grass-roots approach to building community.
2) You can pay to have people post on your forums. There are many companies and individuals that will gladly accept your currency to create activity on your site. A potential downside is the quality of the posts. It's important to make sure that the posters are familiar enough with your topic to write intelligent posts.
3) Contests and sweepstakes are great ways to get people interested in your site. I have offered the chance to win prizes to new members who post at least ten topics within a 30-day period. Make sure your prizes are desirable by the people you are seeking for members. Promote your contest wherever you are able and watch the community grow!
4) Automatic posting. Now I don't want to tread too far into "gray hat" tactics, but what I am going to suggest is a legitimate way to get your forums started. You may be familiar with Yahoo! Answers, a site that is content rich on just about every topic under the sun. Well, I came across some software which is incredibly easy to install that you can use to populate your site with topics and replies from Yahoo! Answers in a matter of minutes. And the way the software uses Yahoo! Answers is totally within Yahoo's terms of service. It's called Vumpost and you can get a copy at MyInstantForums.com
To test VumPost, I created six new forum sites (it runs with PhPBB and VBulletin), and populated the sites with a handful of topics and replies.
Check out these examples:
We set up a simple design and a few main topic categories with PhPBB.
By typing in a few keywords using VumPost, in just a few minutes the sites were populated with content!
No, the content is not fresh. But it IS relevant.
And I do not recommend building an entire site using this tool. It is a method of kickstarting the content on your site for two purposes.
First, Google will see the content and begin indexing your pages.
And more importantly, visitors will see content and be more likely to register and post.
So is there any one best way to build a community site? Not necessarily. I would consider any of the above methods and figure out which works best for you.
To get VumPost, click here
It's Del.icio.us!
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October 9, 2008 03:43 PM
Great post about auto forums, thanks!