Very well points Renee! I'd have to stress point #1 about an empty forum over and over again! The users to a forum
need to see something there that they think is worth coming back to check later on... I've been a part of the building of several forums, and only once have I seen a forum start with nothing and end up with a
huge user base.
And that was a special case... where I personally opened a board up after being a well known "expert" on a specific topic on various boards already, and when I opened the users simply
flocked to follow me. That particular board started with about 5 messages the first day, and after two years has seen
3.5 million posted & viewed.
Back to the topic, search engines are important but very
difficult to master with discussion boards. For different related searches on your site’s topic, consider
entry pages with keywords, page titles, and descriptions with targeted search phrases for spiders to notice... plus, the more links to your site there are, the higher your rankings will be. Don’t forget to check your stats monthly for the referrers and, if you have the capability, a more complex report of the actual terms that your site was found with. Then
adjust your tags accordingly.
On your point #3, I can't stress that one enough for commercial websites. Information you provide to others results in a sense of
trust, which those who gain from your post will have in you. I've seen businesses go from nothing in web-related sales to 70% of their business being directly influenced by a discussion board in just a year's time... it is really amazing when you play it right, the results you get will be rewarding. (More on that later…)
Another great way of promoting your site is through a
free newsletter. It’s probably a good idea to place it in the top right corner of your page if possible, since that's where people look first on a page, and see the subscriptions roll in. Once you gain a newsletter base, you can use that to execute viral marketing tactics like "forward this special code to your friends and let them save 15% too!" or other things along those lines. I can't tell you how many times I get
e-mail forwards from people, and the forward lists are usually quite long! One e-mail you send to 10 people could possibly translate into 500, 600, 700 or more users getting that e-mail through forwards and, that is, as we call it, "viral networking."
Now let's see if we can get this discussion going!
Muhammad Chishti
Creative dIRECTOR
http://www.imcuniverse.com