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 people to start contributing. You wait
and wait. Days turn into weeks and weeks turn into years, and still
nobody visits your board. Whats going on?

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

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

The next tasks is to beginning telling everybody 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 might who will
actually contribute to the community that you are trying to contruct .

A sizeably efficient place to initial 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 beginning to determine who is
active in the board, perhaps make a few friends and gain some respect.

You can tactfully invite many people 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 often enough and they can eject you
entirely.

Just choose one or two everybody who are interested in your topic, who
you respect and admire and would build grand contributors to your
board. Dont send a personal communication to every one - just a few
selected people.

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

You can also reference your board within your newsletter (you do send
out a newsletter, dont you?) and as part of your e 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 marketing 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 grasping
all the people to return to your website many times, but in order to be
useful they must be promoted heavily and constantly. If you do so,
then you might find your board will take on a life of its own and
become as popular (or even more so) than your page .