e-Business-Formula Internet Marketing Discussion Forum

Subweb · Joined: 27 Apr 2007 Posts: 10

How do you suggest to make a message board unique? I recently opened up my first major video game board on vBulletin, but I feel no one is coming to it. I am offering a contest for a magazine subscription, but still no one is coming. Any recommendations? How can I make this board different than others?

Trusylver · Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2007 10:56 am Post subject:

If you post link to your new forum some of the members here may be able to make specific sugestions. Generally being a game forum you will need good skin to show you have put some effort into your forum and to show that it is not just another vanilla forum with a standard install. Be active yourself, provide good and interesting information on your game topics.

Subweb · Joined: 27 Apr 2007 Posts: 10

Well it is www.forum4games.net/forum . It is brand new. I am not looking for lots of traffic, but enough to keep people posting. I didn't think posting link were allowed, and thanks a lot.

Kevin Robb · Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2007 8:39 am Post subject:

My best tip is this...

Do a Google search for other forums relevant to your niche and become active in them, post a link to your site in your sig file if it is within the rules of the forum.

Think about it this way, If you want to buy some apples you don't go to an electrical store!

Go to the places where others with similar interests to you would go!

Cheers Wink

Kevin Robb

Busterz9 · Joined: 29 Apr 2007 Posts: 10 Location: Georgia

To make a forum unique, you need a good topic to talk about.

You need a nice, custom skin or template to make your forum stand out.

You need good, proper moderation, a decent number of boards and a nice active community.

Buster

Subweb · Joined: 27 Apr 2007 Posts: 10

I really liked Kevin Robb's idea on it. You have to know where to go to get what you want. I will try and work on that when I have time.

Trusylver · Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2007 8:15 pm Post subject:

after visiting your forum

Things I like

Nice skin
Easy to read

but

you need to add your logo in the space provided in the skin.

reduce the number of boards untill you have more regular posters. having a few post spread across so many boards and so many empty boards will put off many first time visitors. by having fewer boards you will make the forum look like it has more activity which will attract more members.

ways to do this could be combine all of the nintendo boards together, or even combine them into just 3 boards one for the Wii (current system), one for the older nintendo consoles and one for the handheld systems (advanced etc.) this should be done for each brand.

Juice · Joined: 16 Apr 2007 Posts: 38

I agree with Trusylver re: having a low number of categories until you get enough members. There's nothing more ugly than a forum with 100-odd categories and there's only a couple of posts in each of them!

PamelaR · Joined: 16 May 2007 Posts: 27

I think some of the best forums are ones that had a community in place before the forum existed. A popular blog or ebook writer might create a forum as a way to communicate with their readers. The readership already exists so it is easier to create a forum. Even then, the forum might not be extremely busy. Look at Steve Pavlina's forum. His blog gets tons of traffic. His forum has decent traffic but it still isn't hopping.

The best way is to make friends in your niche, possibly through posting on other message boards (don't spam, of course).

Juice · Joined: 16 Apr 2007 Posts: 38

There are many sites out there that have thousands of unique visitors to the site every day, but the forum will almost always go un-noticed (mostly due to poor link placement and whatnot). But it depends on your niche and if the niche is "discussable".