Promote your strongest discussions in relevant communities, recruit niche creators, launch member referrals and email digests, while keeping clear rules so edgy content stays manageable.
Niche creators which what, tiktok creators? I am ashamed and it's difficult for me to do so, I feel very embarassed in doing so.
promote specific discussions rather than the forum homepage. Share the best threads in relevant communities and use short clips/posts on X, Reddit, TikTok, etc. to create curiosity and send people to the discussion.
My forum is from abroad, not American. This means I have less competition but also less awareness to begin with.
Make sure the forum looks active when someone joins. a few good discussions with regular replies can make a big diffrence.
It is active and it has users, which is precisely why I am so desperate to gain momentum, cause right now I have real people there not bots, but I wish to keep it that way and I need new blood.
See what topics your current users talk about most, then create more discussions around them.
This forum was created as a haven for refugees from another site. I'll give an example which isn't our case, but incels.is was a haven for refugees from the subreddit, so an existing community migrated. We are not incels, but we too migrated, especially because of the lack of free speech in the previous platform.
Share tips or tricks which are unique or rare. You can also share some paid stuffs in the forum.
I have no tricks to sell, our whole thing is basically elevated free speech in our respective non-anglo country. What is paid stuff?
to me, paid advertisements will not help to overcome this challenge. what I believe is the way out is to encourage video discussion that bring about disagreements.
Our audience is Americanized but not Americans. What do you mean by video discussions.
I guess you can run some ads but you need to understand nowadays people don't use forums that much
I guess so but I refuse to let the notion of it put me down
If it's unique and niche forum, then you can promote it through influencer marketing. However, the forum should be active and provide value for users to join and stay active. Most people are moving away from forums due to AI doing the heavy-lifting for them and answering all questions. So, you should have something that AI can't recreate or something that people can't access without an account. It'll be easy to hype it up through influencers and attract new users.
It isn't that unique, it's just that in our respective country there is less of it, not many people in my country are willing to allow the things I allow ( no crimes allowed, but yes for edgy content and unconventional stuff ).
certainly controversial content would attract attention, but it is only through dialogue that retention would ocur.
And how does one retain that.
The issue creates interest, but debate nd poster groups are the ones that keep the forum alive.
post interesting questions regularly instead of only promoting the forum. good discussions can bring people back.
the ads may attract traffic, but sustained participation requires a few committed users who can generate arguments worth participating in.
Save your ad money just share pictures of your best forum threads on social media to attract real people.
If you are operating an edgy forum, standard advertising is likely to face rejection or disregard, as major platforms tend to avoid controversial content.
I once advertised something very very problematic and it was allowed. I guess majority of censorship hits hard only if you are English speaking. We are a group of Americanized youngsters, but not Americans. Guess Facebook and other platforms go easier on non-English communities.
For example, if you wish to do some innovation, begin from technical configuration nd low competitive content clusters. make 10-15 content pieces in one sub-niche nd then try to build backlink.
It is just a waste of money to build backlink before seeing any impression from the keyword in google search console.
I don't know really the whole gist of backlinks and stuff, you mean links from other sites that point to my site. But I need engagement not just visits.
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For the whole lot of you, is there some forum advancing expert or some service like that which I can pay perhaps to do those things?
Like I feel overwhelmed and confused. Maybe helpful would be someone who actually went through my struggle of setting up a forum with truly active members that just grow.
