Telling Others About Your Forum, Before it is Open

A technique to help pull your forum off the ground at launch that I have found to be useful in the past is to tell people about your forum before it opens.

That's right, let people know what is coming. Convince them that this community will be a place they will like, before publicly showing it. Do this with juicy news, sneak peeks, and whatever it may be that you think will create anticipation.

If you can successfully pull it off and follow through with the plans, you should have a handful of people waiting to join the forum the second it opens. Sure, some people may not want to join regardless, because it is still an empty forum, but you're bound to get some.

 

I am trying out this theory with an upcoming project I am working on. I placed a very brief and informative "coming soon" version of my site here: Satourian.com
and started promoting the site on other forums, and sites. It has helped so far.

 

Sounds good. Njdeh - be sure to let us know how that works out once you officially open your site.

 

What I did with my EduPhil.org forum was invite my closest friends from college to a forum yet on my personal domain name. In fact, they had a share in deciding the URL of the site. The "official" opening came a few weeks later.

 

That's certainly a good way to get members involved.

 

I tell my friends that is interested in that niche so and they might tell there friends but I am not so good in advertise it before I am opening it up.

 

Good idea, but I don't use this technique.

The day before launch, I open registrations and open posting to members.

And the day of launch, I like to make sure I have more than 100 posts so the community doesn't look inactive to guests/members-to-be.

 

I'm doing something similar with my new forum. What I did was open the forums right away while they're still being set up. I'm calling this a "beta period" and anyone who joins and becomes active during this time will become a Charter Member. I haven't decided if there will be any perks to go along with Charter Member status, but I'm sure people will want to have that special title under their names.

 

I also do that, Dave - I have beta testers come and check out the site, give feedback/further suggestions.

They looks for bugs, kinks, etc.

 

Tom how does that work, if you open it doesn't that mean it's been launched? Or do you assimilate launch with notices and such on other sites?

 

I have an official launch date, and when I launch, when people visit, there's an info bar that says "Welcome to [insert site name here]'s Launch!"

And, I also make posts on other sites, yep.

 

We did this here (but without the Charter member part). The site was created and setup in December of 2007 and since then, we've had visitors come along and sign up. From then until about two weeks ago, we had a handful of posts and after fixing the place up, we were ready to launch. Half the people here now can't even believe we're only 'officially' about two weeks old.

 

Oh that makes sense now. I was confused about how your plan is.

And that makes even more sense to me. I asked some people on Twitter and got different answers. I can't believe this place is 2 weeks old either.

 

Boss, I'm with ya on that one - I am still awe-inspired...

 

One word: dedication.

 

Another word; commitment.

You have to be committed in order to dedicate yourself -

 

And also, a bit of an insider secret - here at AA, we have created a device that excretes super glue out of each member's display. Once it's excreted, it automatically finds its way onto his/her chair.

It's nearly impossible to leave AdminAddict because of this.

 

Dedication times three = this.

 

What kind of glue? Gorilla, Elmer's, Rose Art, Kra-Z...

 

A combination, actually - Gorilla and Elmer's.