How to grow a community?

[r2arthur]

Hi guys,

I believe that a community (a discussion board) about sportsbetting has much value. I'd like to create a community like that on my website, so I'd like to know if you have some strategies or tips for me: What's the best way to grow the members/posts numbers? Sign up promotions? What else?

[CodeRed]

Start with a small group of friends, you will need possibly 10 or so that are fairly active and get them to be excited and posting unique questions and answers with not as many inside jokes. Once you have those start working on the content pages for search engines and you will slowly build more forum members.

[r2arthur]

Interesting idea CoreRed.
I have access to a poker community with ~20k registered members. That poker community has its own sportsbook forum section. Do you think that is a good idea to promote a freeroll only for those who post 3x/day during 30 days on the new community?

[Jeremy]

Interesting idea CoreRed.
I have access to a poker community with ~20k registered members. That poker community has its own sportsbook forum section. Do you think that is a good idea to promote a freeroll only for those who post 3x/day during 30 days on the new community?

If it is another webmasters forum, I don't think they would be too happy with you trying to recruit members away from their forum over to yours.

Stick with what CodeRed suggested, start small, and don't set your expectations too high in the beginning.

[Randy Ray]

The best way to get a community started is to focus on a community that doesn't already have a forum devoted to it. That's how Jeremy started. I've launched one forum in a sub-niche of the casino gambling category, and it took off because it was the only niche-specific forum in that space. If there are a lot of established forums in the niche, building a new community will be really hard.

For example, you'd have a lot more luck establishing a forum for "poker players who live in Texas" than you will establishing a "forum for poker players in general." Even that niche might not be tight enough. "Dallas Fort Worth poker players" would probably be even better.

[r2arthur]

Thanks for the valuable tips folks.

Let's see what happens :-)