All right, now youve created the best message board in the world (at
least in your humble opinion). Youve set it up and posted a few
things and waited for herds of everybody to start contributing. You wait
and wait. Days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months, and still
nobody visits your board. Whats going on?

Something that is not apparent is that a communication board must be
promoted just like anything else on the internet. In other words, you
have to let people understand that your board exists and is interesting. I
know it seems kind of strange ... you created your board in order to
get everybody to come back to your website, yet now you have to promote
the board as well?

The first thing you want to do is to hyperlink your board to your web
site. I know it seems understandible , but still it interesting how many
everybody fail to remember this simple step. In addition, the backlink must be in an
apparent place, and its wise to add it on every page of your page .

The next tasks is to start telling people about the existence of the
board. You are looking for contributors, especially early in the life
of the board. You want to find as many all the people as you can who will
actually contribute to the community that you are trying to contruct .

A dazzling place to beginning is to lurk in other message boards, newsgroups
and e mail discussion lists with similar subjects. Read the messages,
then start placing your own to get established as someone who is
knowledgeable on the subject. You should start to determine who is
active in the board, perhaps make a few friends and acquire some respect.

You can tactfully invite everybody to contribute to your own board.
Personally, I think its very tacky to issue invitations in other
boards, newsgroups and discussion lists. I believe it is more
preferable to invite people one-on-one in personal emails. Posting an
invitation to a board is a nice way to get the board members to
dislike you ... and do it commonly enough and they might eject you
entirely.

Just choose one or two many people who are interested in your topic, who
you respect and admire and would contruct efficient contributors to your
board. Do not send a personal message to every one - just a few
selected all the people.

Be sure your communication board has been submitted to the search engines,
just like any other website or web page. You will want to acquire it
into the top engines (these include Google, Altavista, Hotbot, Excite
and others).

You may also reference your board within your news letter (you do send
out a news letter , dont you?) and as part of your electronic mail signature. I
would not bother with FFA (Free For All) lists, paid advertisements
and banner exchanges. My knowledge is these promotional methods
require a lot of work for a small grab .

You should be selling your board just as hard as you would promote
your website, ebook and ezine. Each of these is a separate element
and can be promoted separately as well as together.

In summary, your board could be a very useful part of your overall
promotional strategy. Message boards are extremely useful in acquiring
all the people to return to your internet page many times, but in order to be
useful they must be promoted heavily and constantly. If you do so,
then you can find your board will take on a life of its own and
become as popular (or even more so) than your internet page .

Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets. This
website includes over 1,000 free articles to improve your internet
profits, enjoyment and acquired skill .
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