how to grow a forum when you're not a writer?

[SnoSheriff]

I started a new website that is related to campgrounds, parks, fishing and other outdoor activities. This is an area that I have interest in but I'm not a blogger or writer so my own forum posts are minimal.

I'm looking for ideas on how to grow my brand new forum. Is there some way to leverage social media websites to somehow drive traffic to my site and have the visitors subscribe, contribute and come back?

For example, how do you guys co-exist with Facebook? How do you drive traffic from FB and why would users post on your website vs FB?

I'm all ears. Thanks!

 

[tenants]

It's pretty hard, I use twitter and automation to pull people in (since some people want events tweeted out to thousands of people, rather than trying to get 1000's of followers their selves), but the best things are tools / products

Get people speaking about them, hell if they have bugs, people are always will to report that

I don't know what web tools you could create for fishing / camping "find my nearest x" which google maps already does pretty well ???

 

[CarpCharacin]

I do fish species profiles on my site.

 

[SnoSheriff]

@tenants How do you use Twitter and automation? I'd love to see some sort of import/bridge from something like usenet to Xenforo... Not sure if that would work tho. Please share more about pulling people

@CarpCharacin looks like fairly new site. So, how did you pull in new members and get the content started?

 

[CarpCharacin]

@CarpCharacin looks like fairly new site. So, how did you pull in new members and get the content started?

I actually started it in december of 2014, but I hadn't really focused on it until a few months ago. @Anders247 and I have been working on species profiles. We are hoping it will become active in the next few months.

 

[SnoSheriff]

I actually started it in december of 2014, but I hadn't really focused on it until a few months ago. @Anders247 and I have been working on species profiles. We are hoping it will become active in the next few months.

how did you promote to get new members and get the content started?

 

[tenants]

@tenants How do you use Twitter and automation? I'd love to see some sort of import/bridge from something like usenet to Xenforo... Not sure if that would work tho. Please share more about pulling people

Hmm, I do it my self using Amazon web Service, Selenium and a twitter api I created.

It's not strictly ethical (following relevant users and unfollow-no follow back after a week automatically), but auto tweeting events is probably more ethical, you can probably find lots of auto tweet tools that pick up threads by rss feed

 

[CarpCharacin]

how did you promote to get new members and get the content started?

I asked friends to join etc. Some people from here joined my site and posted.

 

[SnoSheriff]

I've been thinking about contacting a bunch of related businesses (example: lodges/cabins) and offer them FREE advertising posts on my website. This would generate some new content and members. Obviously slow and non-automated process. Thoughts on this approach?

 

[SnoSheriff]

I'm looking for input on how to use social media platforms (FB, Twitter, Instagram...) to draw their members to my site. I know of sites that have FB page and Xenforo site so can that be used to start new XF site somehow?

 

[tommydamic68]

I have a huge FB page, also a FB group and a large IG account. I will share a post from my forum if a question is asked in the group that pertains to some good content on my forum.

 

[SnoSheriff]

@tommydamic68 awesome forum. I love those ugly cats .

So in the beginning, did you build the FB and IG sites first? If so, how did you drive traffic to your forum?