How to build messageboard traffic

Getting your own forum can be a pretty tough thing. A new visitor may not join or post seeing that not many members are on it and because of this active content might not actually start developing. A vicious circle indeed.

Let me then tell you about how I started and built my message board. The website was education related and for MBA aspirants to seek and clarify doubts. I started out various new threads on various topics and opened several categories for discussion. In the first week itself, a couple of members joined in and put in their first posts.

The trick is that post questions that are pretty well known and easy to answer. An inquisitive visitor may find the question,something he can answer, and so start the discussions. The problem is that you cannot get them to be a repeat traffic from the first visit.

To get them back, you need to get new replies on the topics where he has posted. This gets an email to the inbox which might help in getting the visitor back to see what is written.

But then, to expect this to happen naturally is pretty difficult. For this purpose, you need to find a few of your personal friends with whom you can discuss and talk on the forums on the topic. But then , if you are an indiviual webmaster, it is sort of unethical, but then always welcome for a new forum. Make fake profiles and post and repost so that discussions actually happen.

One thing you need to remember is do not stuff the discussions from a single profile. The discussion should look to be made from a lot of persons so that the new visitor feels that he would be missing out something if he did not join the group.

Visit other related forums, gather topics that can be discusssed, post it from different profiles. Slowly and surely, traffic will start pouring.

By the way, all this advice is for forums started independently. If you already have a decent traffic on your main website, you can popularize your messageboard on the main website, and expect membership to grow over time.