How to get people to signup on a forum

[cyberoptik]

Hi,

I just started http://webmasterhq.net/ and already it has 10 members (from me telling friends).  how do you guys recommend getting outside members? (ie posting in other forums?  what)

thanks,
Ron

[12noon]

Posting in other forums such as this, might get you the odd person signing up, but i'm not sure how to go about getting people to sign up to a message board.
I've tried allsorts myself and i've picked up a few members, but most of them only posted on the day they signed up and i might not see them again.
I opened up the forum to none members the other day, to see if i can get more people posting without having to sign up. It's not worked yet tho because i had 42 people online on the message board the other day and didn't get one post !

[SensoVision]

start from posting interesting and useful articles there, maybe even "controversal"  ones I mean such articles which make people to comment them...  also I wouldn't suggest to force people to register because this wouldn't get you good and active members, I think members should choose the forum which correspond to them not vice versa. Also from what I remeber you have other webmaster related sites, why not use them to drive some traffic into forums?

[Andy]

I'm no expert but based on what I go for, I would suggest carving a niche. Everyone wants an active forum so they get responses back swiftly to their posts and they have new stuff to read. So if you aren't doing anything new it will be hard to quickly get a thriving community. So try to specialise in a particular niche area and attract people to your forum via your website and/or your posts on other forums (targeting people who aren't quite right for that forum but would love yours). e.g. webmasters from hell LOL

[whiteRabbit]

Well, followings are some of commonly suggested approaches (you might have heard already):

1. Talk to yourself; create multiple user accounts and talk to yourself.  It might feel a little weird, but the analogy I heard is that it's like street musician or artist.  They are basically playing music or playing a drama for themselves at the beginning; eventually, people come and they sit there and start listing to your music or watch your play.  Soon you'll have a big circle surrounding you.

2. No empty thread; keep the forum small initially and add a couple of new categories as you get number of posts.

3. Provide fresh content frequently; maybe you can check Google News or Yahoo News and pick up a topic to discuss.  You don't have to write your own article, but provide fresh content.

4. Create welcoming atmosphere; when a new user comes in, you want to welcome him/her.  Also no screaming, yelling or cursing; you don't have to be super polite, but courtesy and decency (especially at the beginning).

5. Ah... post 20 messages and display your signature with a link to your forum in Webmaster Key!

6. Give incentives to people so that they want ot participate in your forum; kind of tricky, but something to keep in mind.

7. You want to have a pretty specific topic to discuss in your forum such as gardening (Dutch style), how to create good milk shake, Java programming on FreeBSD, and how to immigrate to North Korea.  Then, create categories; don't spread out too thin.

7.2. You probably want to have a couple of categories to discuss general topics such as General Chat, Lounge, and Suggestions and Feedback.

... well, things like these.

[Queen Bee]

Talk to yourself; create multiple user accounts and talk to yourself.

I do that now and I don't even have a forum! I like creating multiple accounts for the purpose of expressing my two different forum personalities- The polite less obtrusive one (Usually known as Articutis), and the blunt, straightforward one (Usually something of the sort like Dexiolabos).

I was unable to do that on this forum because of the fact that my IP is logged. It would be too obvious. Now I'm forced to share equal amounts of my personality on Articutis, even though that's not how I prefer it.

By the way, thanks for the great tips. If I ever create my own forum I will keep these in mind.

[SensoVision]

1. Talk to yourself; create multiple user accounts and talk to yourself.  It might feel a little weird, but the analogy I heard is that it's like street musician or artist.  They are basically playing music or playing a drama for themselves at the beginning; eventually, people come and they sit there and start listing to your music or watch your play.  Soon you'll have a big circle surrounding you.

actually I saw such examples... and it's interesting for people but it's not interesting for you since you talk not people... and the task of the forum is a bit different than providing monolog to yourself, for this purpose would be better to use blog IMHO. By the way if you ever read agreements which are used by default on many communities creating of mutiply accounts is prohibited...

No empty thread; keep the forum small initially and add a couple of new categories as you get number of posts.

totally agree on 2, 3 and 4

Ah... post 20 messages and display your signature with a link to your forum in Webmaster Key!

now actually we display all sigunatures, but if you like this feature I can ask folks on SMF and maybe they will make a mod for this.

Give incentives to people so that they want ot participate in your forum; kind of tricky, but something to keep in mind.

that's the hardest one IMHO... it's good if you could find some unique way to accomplish this, because if not community most likely wouldn't live for too long.
6 and 7 are also correct points. Good post WR!

I was unable to do that on this forum because of the fact that my IP is logged. It would be too obvious. Now I'm forced to share equal amounts of my personality on Articutis, even though that's not how I prefer it.

Rachel' I'm not sure but actually most if not all of communities log your IP and they are visible to admins so they can use them if necessary.

By the way, thanks for the great tips. If I ever create my own forum I will keep these in mind.

don't leave us, Rachel it wouldn't be same place without you. I better make you second admin so you'll own a part of this community

[Queen Bee]

Rachel' I'm not sure but actually most if not all of communities log your IP and they are visible to admins so they can use them if necessary.

Not those lame home-made ones. And the graphic ones... I can't actually remember what they're called right now, but they don't log IPs.

don't leave us, Rachel  it wouldn't be same place without you. I better make you second admin so you'll own a part of this community

Ha, I wouldn't leave anyway- Unless you kicked me out.
Besides, I'll probably never make my own forum... I'd have to have a popular site with an interesting theme, and who knows if that would ever happen.

[whiteRabbit]

actually I saw such examples... and it's interesting for people but it's not interesting for you since you talk not people... and the task of the forum is a bit different than providing monolog to yourself, for this purpose would be better to use blog IMHO.

Well, what I'm suggesting is to create multiple accounts for you and talk among them (initially).  It's not monolog, it's dialog.

By the way if you ever read agreements which are used by default on many communities creating of multiple accounts is prohibited...

Though rules say so, I believe you can create multiple accounts in many forums and I think you should be allowed to.  If you are not frequently visiting some forum and if you are participating in number of different forums, you might forget your username.  You might just want to use a different username.  I personally feel that the user should be able to create as many accounts as they want.  You don't have to agree with me, but if you want, you can create 1000 accounts in MY forum .

[SensoVision]

let me provide example of not proper using of mutliply accounts... person didn't register second account in this case but post as a guest... we also have similar posts previously... http://forum.weblamp.net/index.php?threadid=297
as you can see person try to advertise his business by pretending to be someone else, you still think that mutiply accounts is great thing?
as for people who forgot his nickname we have password and login retrival form, or they always can write to me. But if they prefer to register new account I think there would be no problem... since they use one account not two...

Ha, I wouldn't leave anyway- Unless you kicked me out.
Besides, I'll probably never make my own forum... I'd have to have a popular site with an interesting theme, and who knows if that would ever happen.

hehe we don't wish you to kick anywhere as for popular site be sure that it will become popular with the time.

[MyWebTeks]

Everybody has made some very good points.

One thing to remember is to use the tools you already have and take for granted. For example email. How many emails do you send out everyday? In a week? In a month? You should always have a link with a discription of your site (or board in this case) included in your emails. Create your signature so that you can include it easily in your emails.

Another thing is if you are very knowledgeable about a particular subject, write articles and publish them to sites that are looking for fresh content and establish yourself as an expert in your field. Make sure and place a link to your board to invite those that read your articles to further discuss what ever it is that your write about. This not only will help drive more traffic to your site but help you in the search engines because your link will show up as a one way link to your site and give it more credibility in the eyes of the search engines. This is one of the same techniques used in SEO although there are many more.

Make it interesting, helpful, useful and at times even controversial and this will keep your visitors coming back.