Social Media Promotion

[Belthazar]

Social media is a tricky business. No one really knows the secret to promotion there; however, due to loads of people using social media, we all try promoting there. In your experience, what are some keys to social media promotion?

 

[Thomasss]

Social media promotion is tricky, you have to know how to use the correct hashtags. Most people start promoting and then get down when no one retweets or "hearts" the post, or if it's not doing anything after a few days. Social media isn't instant for the forum community, it's something gradual and you're really only posting to get the word out. Posting with the only intent to advertise will take some time for people to see; and if the account is ONLY advertising, it's considered spam to most people.

People also have to realize, social media wasn't meant to have forums advertise on; it was meant for people to connect with others so you have to take that into consideration as well.

 

[Sylar]

Ehh, I think it's kind of hard to promote a forum properly on a platform such as twitter. In the past, I've seen 2 approaches

1) Basically spamming. Have a bot that constantly posts new topics and posts from your forum to twitter with hashtags related to your niche. Also, buy a bunch of fake followers so that people think you have a really established account. Then, you can sell ads on your account and allow for your ranking to increase because you are advertising popular things to people. Therefore your account gets more attention, therefore your ads for your forum get more attention, and then you have a small but steady stream of activity coming in through twitter.

2)Have a dedicated person for twitter, or have an admin that can handle being the twitter master and an admin. This person is constantly posting things from the forum to twitter, but also constantly interacting with people on a personal level. Liking, retweeting, and just replying to what people are saying in an effort to increase the forum's social media presence.

Overall, I think either approach is viable. It just depends what you want to do. As far as other networks go(Facebook, Insta, etc.) I haven't even bothered. Twitter has provided enough impressions and new users in the past that there wasn't really a need to go to other networks.

 

[Cryptography]

I have bought 2000 followers for my forum's Twitter accounts, and I have linked it with the forum's RSS feed. Now every new thread posted gets posted to the Twitter, and gets almost instant views.

 

[randiv]

Personally i feel it SMO is really very important for generating traffic.

 

[Teg1]

Well, recently as this week... The other day I posted a login screen design that I made for my HogEx site in a harry potter group that I'm in on Facebook. It turned into one person asking for the link. Then in less than 48 hours we went from 4 members and not being open to having 51 members and trying to balance members and backend stuff. It's been a challenge. From experience, I like to join groups that represent my niche and allow me to post to the group or page's wall. Then, from time to time I'll throw in a subtle post with a link. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

 

[Ash]

I've started social media promotion although I think I need to do it much more often for it to work.