My forum www.utexas-forums.com is haveing trouble getting members. I've made a posting contest and put around 500 flyers under people's doors, purchased 40k facebook flyers and massed e-mailed 4 of my classes.

Does anyone have any other suggestions for me? Its REALLY hard to pick up momentum.

Seems to be doing OK from what I can see

There are members online and postings

What you need to do is make the contest more promiment. Remove the adsense ads and usethe space to promote the contest since that is more important than a few cents from clicks.

Perhaps there are too many categories as well.

Hello fellow Austinite!

My best suggestion would be to condense some of the forums. One forum with 100 posts looks much better than 10 forums with 10 posts each. When you need to, start breaking down topics (but only when you really need to because posts are falling off the page faster than people can reply).

I would condense the Black Market to just one forum (people can just list either FS or WTB). I would also make Off Topic just one forum. Why make people work harder to contribute? Ask them to go to just one place for chit chat stuff.

Other than that, just stay on top of promoting. You need to put in months of hard work to get the seed started properly. After that, it will thrive mostly on its own. If you have identified core users (ie. people who post and return more than once), contact them directly to say hi and thank them for coming on board. You want to reward those people at this point, but all they need is acknowledgement and they will be happy. Start topics that encourage talking, but not right or wrong answers. Write something really controversial about a school policy - take a stand and let others come and agree or disagree. Provide something there that UT students can't get anywhere else. You need a unique selling point to get people to come back. Can you hold some sort of IRL party or something? Or get shirts made to wear around campus? Stickers? Just thinking outloud...

You won't make much from adsense on a site like this. Start now working on exclusive partnerships. Are there any online shops for Longhorn stuff? If they don't have an affiliate program, contact them about referring students for a cut of the sale. Better yet, come up with some cool new shirt ideas and offer them to the shop, then promote them to your members. Contact local stores where college kids frequent, and try and set up some sort of UTF coupon deal (like they present a coupon and get a free drink or whatever). This promotes the local joint and you. You really have to SELL your site, though. Make sure to tell that business how much good you can do for them, and NOT how great and pretty and successful your forum is.

You need to get hooked up, and since your board is local, it's easier to do. Go pound the pavement and you will find that things should start happening faster.

Hope that helps some!

Laura
www.notebookforums.com

Thanks those are some great ideas!

If I may add my thoughts...

Change the copy at the top of the page that encourages users to sign up. This bit:

"...so please, join our community today!"

sounds too much like begging. You should make them want to join because they're missing out, not because you need more members.

I agree with NBF about the AdSense - especially since I was shown ads about hacking passwords!

Possibly also think about revamping the design a bit. It looks a little dowdy.. the beigey brown isn't very exciting.

The school's official colors are Orange and White, with Burnt Orange — also known as Texas Orange — being the specific shade of orange used.

yea your forum is doing good with 18 members online and 180 guest. ide say make your contest more visible. adsense will do something for you but maybe have it on the left and bottom and make the top part for your contest. make it easy to read and understand. break it down so a 2 year old can understand it.

the template looks nice and simple so no problems there. good luck and let us know how it goes.

Laura gave some nice tips on integrating your forum with your offline community.

Here's an article on going local that has some tips for local online community as well.

If you need to be successful, forget about page-traffic-CPC mentality. Think about the value you provide to your visitors.

You can start cooperative projects with establishments (shops, libraries, companies, gyms, etc) that your students use often. Offer reviews, latest news, insider information (one of the company staff as a moderator), contests with relation to offline, etc.

I suppose you may very well be suited for word of mouth advertising. Create topics that resonate with your students and work around them. View them from different aspects. Allow your visitors to share their thoughts and discuss the ideas.

Laura made an excellent point of not necessarily touching topics, where are right or wrong answers. Eternal discussions, such as whether tea or coffee is better, whether run inside or outside for maximum efficiency, might make more sense, because they are based on people's taste, not on objective reality (though some may argue on coffeine and the advantages of fresh air, but that's another topic..see?).

you need to get those guest turned into members. contest and good quality content will help you. the content is key and a latest thread on the left side will help.

thanks for all your helpful information. Keep them coming !:thumbup:

I would say its doing fine, theres always people online so all you need now is it to build up momentum. You have set the ball rolling, so with time, more people will definetly join.

Great info on this thread... I am having the exact same problems... I am picking up an old hobby (tropical fish keeping) and decided it would be cool to keep track of it online with blog and forum... Although I am getting traffic I get zero registrations...

-che

You need a football catagorie:tooth:


If you live in Texas you know that football is EVERYTHING.

Wow you call this a struggling forum? It's doing fantastic. Just keep growing it, keep promoting it, keep giving users reasons to post. You're not doing bad at all.

So far the foum looks good