Here is a couple of ideas that may just help you in getting your board out to the world.
- Your board should be your bestfriend. It should be the one board that you spend the most time at. If you're not an active owner at your own board then it makes the baord its self look bad.
- Dont make the first 5-10 registered members apart of your staff. Its makes guests think that the only people there are your staff.
- Dont let guests see everything at your board but at the sametime dont greatly restrict them from veiwing your forums. If they dont know what all you have then they more than likely will not want to join.
- If you have a redirect forum for guests to register, click it yourself every once in a while before you log in. The more hits they see there the more likely they are to join knowing that many people have joined too. Just make sure its not more than your total member count.
- Let people know what all the board can offer. Dont keep them in the dark. Giving short, to the point descriptions doesnt appeal. I want a thorough description of your board.
- Adding your board to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Dog Pile, Altavista, etc. is a good idea.
- When starting out, try & keep your board small. People dont like it when they have to scroll through all of these forums that dont have much to them. Once you get larger then its better to add more forums & spead out what you have.
- Make sure your board links are always working. I have seen so many good boards lose members because someone was too lazy to update their links.
- Top Sites are also a good way to get many people to visit your board. Join a big one, post the button, & get your members to vote for you. All you need to do is get into that top 10-25 & you are probably going to be on the front page of that top site for everyone to see.
- Allowing guests to posts means you lose members. A board tends to look really bad if all it has is posts from guests that have not & will never actually join.
- Be unique! Use your brain & think up one-of-a-kind ideas. If you have something that no other board has then it greatly increases the chance that people will join there.
- When you post your board in advertising forums, make sure to make it neat. Many boards offer templates for you to use. Use them. Its better to have a neat & organized board than a messy one. Colour also helps with this too.
- Get your board reviewed by others. Let them tell you what they like & do not like about it. The more critiques you have the more things you know if to change that will make the board look better.
- Use signature banners that appeal. There are many many Graphics boards that will create you a very nice looking promotion banner.
- You can always advertise outside of other boards. Word of mouth, messanger services such as AIM & Yahoo. MySpace is also a big one. There are 55 million registered users there & it is one of the largest communties on the internet. Create an account & find groups that are based on something that is talked about at your board. If its based on music then find a MySpace group that is also based on music. You will find many people that may be interested in your board.
If you guys & gals could tell me of some other ideas, I would greatly appreciate it. I will add them to this list, if theres something that you think I missed.
This post has been edited by Ryan on Aug 2 2006, 12:21 AM 
Getting Your Board Known
