Forum Promotion 101: The Basics – Topic

September 30th, 2007

This is my first post in what is going to be a multi-part series on how to promote a forum. I have broken the different aspects of forum promotion down into small parts to make reading this tutorial more manageable.

We all know that forums are notoriously hard to get off the ground and this problem is frequently aggravated by webmasters who have not done proper research before launching their forum. It takes time and patience – a lot of both. You must expect to put many hours into your forum before you start to see gain. Building and promoting a forum is considerably different than building and promoting a standard website.

Promotion is present during all life-stages of a website – planning, building, launching, and maintaining. This tutorial series will take you through the basics on how to properly perform these four steps to successfully promote your forum. So, without further ado…

Step 1: Planning

Before you even purchase hosting for your future forum or download the software, you should have a battle plan. I say battle plan because it is exactly that – a battle. There are thousands of forums on the internet, and hundreds of them are on exactly what you want to create yours about. This is why proper planning is crucial – you need to come out swinging, and swinging hard, or you will undoubtedly become just another no-name forum that couldn’t surpass the 1,000 member mark.

So, grab a pencil and a sheet of paper, and let’s start planning. There are four main items that you need to think carefully about. Today we will be discussing the first one.

1. Topic
2. Audience
3. Design
4. Monetization

1 – Topic

Your topic obviously defines your forum. What is it going to be about? Maybe you are creating a fan-site for your favorite game, or a place where members can discuss technology. Generally speaking, the more refined your topic is, the better your chance is at becoming successful. You can’t be a jack-of-all-trades – it’s impossible to promote.

For example, if you chose “video games” as your topic, do a quick google search for video game forums and you will be overwhelmed. There are thousands of video games and millions of gamers, and at first this may make you think that with such a huge audience base it will be easy getting traffic and members. In reality, this is a bad idea – you want to become the go-to source, or authority, for your subject, and you cannot achieve that status by covering dozens of different subjects.

I’m sure you have heard other webmasters go on about the importance of choosing a niche market. Niche is defined as “a distinct segment of a market.” “Video games” is not distinct. Try to narrow it down to something more specific. You may be thinking “XBox video games.” Well, that is better, but it is still too broad of a target. Try focusing on one specific xbox game, like Gears of War.

Now you also have to be careful when you have narrowed it down as far as you can go, because some niches are still far too populated for you to have a good chance of success in. Using my above example, if you chose Halo as your niche, doing a search for Halo forums produces an uncountable amount of results. If you are really passionate about the niche you chose, then go for it, but it’s going to be magnitudes harder. Otherwise, find a niche with less competition.

On the other hand, you also have to keep in mind your traffic potential. You will need a decent amount of potential traffic to grow your forum and profit from it. Some niches are just too small to get any amount of measurable traffic from. It’s all about finding the right balance between supply and demand.

I have compiled a list of helpful links in selecting and judging a niche:

• Niche Tools at NetBlogger.be
• NicheBot
• Wordtracker Free Trial
• Google Adwords – use their Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator Tool

I will also be writing an article dedicated on how to choose a good niche in the near future.

So now you know how to go about choosing which topic your forum is going to be about. Let me say, however, that the above was in no ways a comprehensive guide on how to choose a topic. I suggest searching google for articles on niche choosing techniques. Here are some good ones that I have found (although some of them talk about blog niches, the same principles apply):

• How To Choose A Niche Topic at Problogger.net
• How To Choose The Right Niche at DoshDosh.com
• Choosing A Site Topic at Websitepublisher.net

I think that that is enough information to digest for one day, so here is what I want you to do:

1. Create a list of all the possible topics that you would want to create a forum about.
2. Do some research on each of those topics, keeping in mind what I said above. How fierce is the competition? Is the traffic potential high enough? Is my topic too broad?
3. Shorten your list down to just a couple of candidates that, after doing step 2, you think are your best choices – then choose one!
4. Come back and read my next article in the Forum Promotion 101 series, which will talk about how being able to properly identify and develop your site around your target audience is a key part in creating a successful forum.

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