Do you have a usergroup on your forum who help out specifically with bringing people into the community and who always help advertise as much as they can in return for a free permanent premium membership? Were considering this on our forums to help recruit some new members in. Would you try this yourself? I personally think its a really good idea.
Do I have a forum group - no, I do not. Some of my members started making their own youtube videos, and included a link to the site in the description or water marked their video with the website name.
Youre VERY lucky Kevin! Not so many are so willing to do that off their own backs and without incentive.
My members post on other sites with links back. We also have Clubs listing for all the various MINI Cooper clubs around the world. This is all user generated. The club presidents have their own forum area to share ideas. They also post in their own forums about the site too. They tend to be the recruiters one can have.
It also doesn't hurt when a respected member on my biggest competitor posts a thread with the title "This site has gone to crap" And then a few others post a link to my site in the thread. The best part is I did nothing to instigate it and the site won't kill or lock it for fear of the backlash.
Not really, my members now and then will post info and a link to my forum on their facebooks, but I think thats about it really, oh and a few have posted links on their blogs.
I actually have a couple members that have latched onto TVOTB and promised to do some major advertising for it. One created a myspace account for it, another one has said he's going to start doing forum advertising for it. I've yet to see either of these pay off, but every bit helps. Do these guys get their own group? In a way no, but not related to the promotion. They do host "live discussions" of events from time to time, so they've got their own discussion forum they can essentially moderate in.
My members refer by word-of-mouth and e-mail, mostly. They also help promote my forum in the Yahoo Groups. Most of my traffic is from Google, so I don't really need to promote very much.
This is an interesting topic, and I think I like the idea of getting forum members to promote my sites in trade for a special usergroup or something similar. Is there a way of giving someone a reward for referrals? I haven't looked into that yet.
This thread might have some ideas : http://www.adminaddict.net/forum/general-community-discussion/rewards-refferals-3281/
Just a quick spanner in the works here... Our forum has no real monetary side to it, very little advertising and certainly no membership fee so numbers really are not a driving force What I do want for the forum are good threads with well considered viewpoints and thereby a good interest level I am quite pleased that members do have other lives and many outside interests away from the forum as it makes for a wider range of opinions and experiences when they do come to post. I get the feeling that some can get a blinkered view on things by being too attached to a forum or community. The thought of splashing the forum details everywhere or even suggesting that members might do this actually puts me off. For our forum I know our members have made a general effort in the right category to subsequently find our forum and then again to join and not just clicked on a signature on a Youtube video comment someone has left. ok I feel out on a limb here but I posted because a fair few here seem to have a different feel about their members and their community than I/we have on our board. Not that any particular way or feel is right or wrong just wanted to say that we seem to have a different viewpoint
