Ways to get member sign ups on my forum?

[Grant Draper]

I admit the traffic is fairly low on my new business forum and it needs some structuring, but I don't get why I've got a low sign up rate. What type of things can I do to increase conversions, or is it a case of the snowball affect as people start to join, more join after them?

[Evea]

Content is the key.
Spruce your forum up and make it fancy and unique.
Encourage your members to promote your forum.
Try your best to shine the light on all your members.
Do everything in your power to keep your forum active.
Create contests.

[jamnation]

Spruce up your forum. if it looks bland, spruce it up. Also be a dual poster which mean you make multiple accounts which heightens activity in forums,.

[RMCService]

Originally Posted by empori_exchange

the fastest possible way is to hire people and tell them to share your forum in different blogs , related forums, face book communities which are related to yours. but you have to spend a good amount of money. you have to hire 4/5 persons then tell them to market your sign in service.
thanks

Agree! If you have some money to spend you can outsource (cheaply) your promotion tasks. You can do forum/comment posting. Place banners on related websites. Doc and video sharing and so on.

As I said, you can outsource all this tasks on freelancer websites (try freelancer[dot]com which is for small business).

Hope that helps.

[jamnation]

Just spread the word and things will eventually fall into place. Hold some contests, or something that would be an incentive.

[SambiaNikole]

make it intereseting
make it count
add something of value

and don't be just any other site on the web.

hope it all helps.

[seolyka2]

Originally Posted by jamnation

Hold some contests, or something that would be an incentive.

I think running a contest would help increase sign ups on your forum like giving a prize to those who can contribute the highest number of quality posts.

[balivillas]

Starting forums usually have hard time getting immediate sign ups from traffic/random visitors alone. They usually have to be informed first about what your forum/community offers to the members as well as its potential for other online businesses if they linked themselves into yours.

What others above me suggests would be a good thing, like giving incentives to people to refer sign ups and potential members to your business forum. Although you have to sum up which one would work best to your business forum especially if you will be putting some real capital for it. Would the effort and capital resources worth spending for these strategy?

If not, try to wait for it to naturally grow as you work on your forum's SEO and online market. As soon as your website become visible to your target market via search engines and other link sources, you'll not be needing any effort to look for sign ups but rather a filter for these crowd of new registrations.

[InFiNiTy™]

Content. If you don't have any unique content, why should I join your forum when there are others out there exactly like yours? Also, fill up all the "No Posts" areas because no one wants to join a forum where they have to start out post a couple hundred threads. And last, do some paid banner promotion. It works.

Good luck!

[Grant Draper]

Thanks for the replies.

I am in no rush to build this up, so will just take my time. I've started to add articles in the content section and there are some posts there, so hopefully over time it should build up and people will start to join.

[webgraphics]

the next is to network with related forum niche especialy those that has much mebers.
it is all about participating on related forum niche.

make a useful contributions and add more info....linking them back to your forum.

doing this, with few time you will start selling good results.

[teamversion]

Here's another suggestion...

Build a landing page where they can register to your forum. Then SEO that landing page for the keywords you are targeting.

You landing page can then contain most of the suggestions above such as prizes for joining your form, what unique contents are in your forum that other don't have, etc.

[marknel]

Optimize your forum for the right keyword,do extensive article marketing and social networking to drive traffic where your articles should answer most of the questions in your niche and for the rest, the links should be directed to your forum.

[zac]

I looked at your site and can see some issues. I'm gonna give it to you straight and not sugar coat anything so please don't get offended. (this is how I learned)

If you haven't already, join vbulletin.org so you can get some plug-ins and stuff to make your forum look better

It's very boring, you need to change the stock vbulletin color scheme to something different.

With forums, the main thing that grabs users attention is the header, because basically all the other content is just words and links. So make a very eye catching header with a background. You can do a full image header by following this... http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=245702

I know you are probably trying to make money off of this site, but don't think about that right now. I would take off the top header adsense until you boost your membership.

put a sidebar up that shows recent posts or something.

Im telling you all this to help you, I too started a forum over a year ago and it got no traffic and members stop visiting. So I re-evaluated it, deleted the whole thing and started over and now it's becoming very popular. I also spend about 3 hours a day posting content. Keep your head up and good luck to you

[johnhernandez]

I think you need to improve your forum functionality, it should be attractive and
always update your forum, add some innovative threads.

[Anton Zaleski]

I remember several forums just dying out for one and the only reason - for interesting, contributing members leaving them. And I knew several guys who actually did nothin' for the design and SEO, but established and kept warm relations with best posters of several other popular communities - and succeeded.
Communication, young Luke!

[BiologyWebmaster]

Always be polite to your registered members, make them feel both wanted and special...truly value and appreciate there presence on your forum.

This can be accomplished in many ways:

1) allowing them to have signatures,
2) providing some free promotion,
3) always reply to their suggestions,
4) create a marketplace for them to conduct business
5) thank them by giving them reputation,
6) invite them to follow you on social networks,
7) encourage them to make referrals,
8) create interesting forum categories and sub-forums to entice participation,
9) create cool and unique usergroups to be a part of,
10) keep forum spam-free, etc....

All of the above-mentioned actions are both free and rather simple to accomplish, keep up with your members too! Nothing is worse than an administrator who is neglectful of their valued members.

Much Thanks,

BiologyWebmaster

[Bearsong]

Do what Cricket did for V7 here. I've been snowed under for months trying to survive an unexpected blast of cash in my budget to pull of several difficult projects with impossible deadlines (and no warnings about it). I read my emailed updates from the forums but haven't come by.

Got a V7 email this morning saying, "We miss you."

And well looky here. Here I am.

Old school personal touch. Works every time, IMHO.

[snakeair]

FYI, Cricket has a way of reaching out to people.


*thinks she is spying on me right now*


When i owned a forum, i had a plugin that sent a "we miss you" email to members who have not logged into the forum in 1 year. This did work and brought back a few members.

[UkEcommerce.com]

Ive just set up a brand new business / Ecommerce forum too, and although it is only a few days old there are only around 20 members so far. I badly need to get people to sign up and start using the site.

Ive allowed people to post their company details and a link to their website in the general business area, in the hope it will encourange members...