Advise on Forum

[eeecwc]

Hello, hoping any experts here would be able to provide me with some good advises and suggestions. I am thinking of setting up a forum, so how do I publicize my forum? I do not have much friends here sadly.
Thank you in advance.

[Strong Eagle]

Who is your audience. What is your forum about?

[eeecwc]

Basically about latest happenings in Singapore. People can come together and talk about it then maybe can organise event together. Therefore, I believe I do not have a specific audience. Free for all.

[eeecwc]

Basically about latest happenings in Singapore. People can come together and talk about it then maybe can organise event together. Therefore, I believe I do not have a specific audience. Free for all.

[sundaymorningstaple]

Already got. sgforum. Defo a free for all! Or hardwarezone, or sammyboy, or stomp.

[Strong Eagle]

Basically about latest happenings in Singapore. People can come together and talk about it then maybe can organise event together. Therefore, I believe I do not have a specific audience. Free for all.

See... you are missing the point already. Certainly, you have a specific audience... those that would be interested in "latest happenings". Lots of people... most of the world, as a matter of fact... don't give a sh*t about the "happenings" in Singapore.

But even then, you still haven't defined your target audience. What kind of happenings? Political? Entertainment? Appearances of monkeys in Watten Estates or cobras on River Valley Road? If it's entertainment, are you targeting the 18-30 crowd, or older folks?

SMS is right... no matter what audience you choose, you will already have a lot of competition... most of those sites really suck... what are you going to do differently? How are you going to make money to cover at least the cost of your website?

Personally, I think it is an idea that will not work, given your lack of experience, and little understanding of your target audience.

[livingontheedge]

Reckon matters you could consider are what is the subject or common topic of interest your Forum relates to. For example, take Hardwarezone, it caters to the common topic/interest of techny stuff and thus crowds traffic the forum cuz they know if the need an advise on any tech related matters or sell one of their tech products, thats the forum they will visit. Another example is Sghouse, it caters to the common topic/interest of accomodation in Singapore and thus crowds traffic the forum cuz they know if they need an advise or seek out for accomodation thats the forum they will visit.

Sgforum caters to the Mass Singaporeans. I reckon as a newcomer to the Forum scene you could consider targetting to the minority groups in Singapore. For example, with the mass influx of Chinese into Singapore led to the creation of a forum and online classifieds dedicated to the Chinese and the whole forum is pretty much in Chinese. Then you have Pinoy.sg which caters to the Pinoys. There are number of minority groups in Singapore such as the Indians, Banglas, Japanese, etc.

[danecobain]

Hi,

I agree with the points that have already been made - you need a more tightly-defined target audience, such as 'wealthy Singaporean businessmen aged 30-50', or 'new mums in Singapore'. It can help if you create visitor personas to make your target audience more real - for example:

John is a wealthy Singaporean businessman aged 37 with disposable income but not much free time. He's looking for a forum to open up networking opportunities for similar businessmen in the local area.

Straight away from that, you'd know that you want a sleek, professional-looking design and that you should prioritise networking and facilitating real-world meet-ups.

You should also be sure to think about SEO - get a professional involved from the start so that you build it in to the site, and make sure that you don't put the forum behind a registration wall. Allow anybody to view any thread without logging in, but require them to sign-up to post new threads or to leave a comment. This will make sure that search engines can see all of the content that your visitors are posting.

From what we've found (I work for a with offices in the UK and Singapore and several Singaporean clients), it's far easier to rank high on the Google.com.sg results page than it is on the American, British and Indian versions of Google, so if you set it up for success from the start, you shouldn't need to do too much to keep up the momentum.

Hope this helps!

Dane

{edited to remove thinly disguised solicitation. - moderator}

[sundaymorningstaple]

I hope your SEO services are better than your cheap shot at advertising

moderator