Managing an online forum involves so many tasks, that many newcomers do not know what they letting themselves in for. Before starting there is getting the domain name, getting the web host, getting the software, changing the theme or style and doing any customisation that is wanted. Then the forum has to be populated with some content (would you hang around an empty forum?). It is important to recruit moderators early as they will help shape the forum, be significant contributors to the forum and help police the forum as it grows. Forum spam, especially vBulletin spam, is a big problem so putting in place strategies early to deal with it is important.
After its all set up, you then have to get the traffic. This is where search engine optimisation comes in to rank the forum high in the search engines. Pay-for-click advertising is often also needed to get enough visitors to get some momentum going. You need to participate in similar other forums and promote your forum signature. You need to submit the forums to forum directories and social bookmark sites. You can also send your forum RSS feed to Twitter.
Once you have the content in place and some good traffic, these visitors then need to be converted to members, then the members need to be converted to regular posters. The only real way to do this is to engage with the visitors and the members. Get them to post in safe places such as an introductions forum. Run some competitions that get people to join and get people to post.
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