Hello, I run a website for sheet music and I think having an active discussion board will really help with traffic. Anyone know how to get the ball rolling?
Getting People to Come Back Using a Discussion Board
- Thread starter computerboy
- Start date
Theirs also services to have someone research your niche and post with a bunch of different accounts to get the forum populated so its not a blank slate but yeah def check out phpBB
Actually, I am already running PHPBB, there are few registered users and I am pretty sure they are not spambots, but I think nobody is posting because of how quiet it is. How do most discussion boards get started? And how much do those posting sevices usually cost?
Make multiple accounts and talk to yourself. You can easily keep a different account logged in to each browser that you have installed. Having Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera installed will allow you to have 5 users logged in to the forum.
customs
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Look at taking some of the people that have made good contributions and promote them to moderator. Then they'll feel like they're connected to the board -> spend more time there and talk more.
Run a contest or a promotion to give away something for best thread/contribution/whatever of the week/month/whatever. Perhaps that'll shake em loose.
Run a contest or a promotion to give away something for best thread/contribution/whatever of the week/month/whatever. Perhaps that'll shake em loose.
I think you're looking at the wrong problem. If you can't even come up with your own discussion on your message board, why do you think anyone else will want to?
OH, oh, oh can I think for you?! I have nothing better to do with my time.
Seriously. Research the topic, look at what other boards are doing and model after that.
I once ran a site about violins. I know shit about violins. I researched and wrote articles and prepared a lot of content. Though I never had hundreds of users when I sold the site I had about 50 fairly active participants...
Funny thing was the site was initially set-up for Adsense but somehow it morphed into a general violin music site.
One thing that I did do was visit other "related" sites and participate as much as I could and that did draw people to my board.
But as a few suggestions already made - mechanical turk works, hire someone to do the legwork and post using different accounts to get the ball rolling.
Seriously. Research the topic, look at what other boards are doing and model after that.
I once ran a site about violins. I know shit about violins. I researched and wrote articles and prepared a lot of content. Though I never had hundreds of users when I sold the site I had about 50 fairly active participants...
Funny thing was the site was initially set-up for Adsense but somehow it morphed into a general violin music site.
One thing that I did do was visit other "related" sites and participate as much as I could and that did draw people to my board.
But as a few suggestions already made - mechanical turk works, hire someone to do the legwork and post using different accounts to get the ball rolling.
Pay someone to post about your forum in another forum in said niche. Then, after about 200 posts, make yer sig a live link to yer forum.
If there is another forum on the same or a similar subject, go there and sort the thread list by number of views. Copy the topics of the top threads. The threads with the most views often have the most search traffic.
1) Go to ANY popular forum.
2) Find threads where the OP posted something helpful (stickies, usually)
3) Copy the grateful replies to the thread.
4) Rewrite the replies (use misspelling, etc if needed)
5) Post something "helpful" on your forum
6) Post your re-written replies under subaccounts
Ta-da!