Looking for a little help getting your forums started?

I ran across the article How to Build A Popular and Profitable Forum Community today, and I thought it was very interesting.

I'm currently using PhpBB for my at Mystical Beauty Forums and my Etailers Mall Forums and found them relatively simple to use. Of course, I installed them through the Cpanel, so that made it really easy.

I do think it is very important to keep posting to new messages to your forums, and keep adding new relavant information to them, even when it feels like you are talking to yourself. It can be very frustrating when trying to get a forum started, but if you get the word out, people will eventually come see what you have to offer.

I had not thought about using ezine articles to keep the interest in the site up, before I read this article, but I am definitly going to look into it now. Since the articles are not on your web pages, and since they will not stand alone, it should be ok reprint these articles in a forum post, without having to worry about duplicate content issues.

I also agree with the author that less is more when it comes to the number of catagories in a new forum. I know I am much more likely to leave a site if it has a bunch of forums with no posts in them.

At the same time, I wonder how some people can send out an email with a message saying "Hey look at this new forum I just created" and when I look at the forum it already has hundreds of posts on it. I guess some people are just lucky like that.

Do you have a forum? Post a comment and share the url, and let us know the best ways you've found to build and promote your forums.

Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,

Sarah