Promoting a Non Tech Savvy Forum?

[Zash]

I currently run a swimming related forum, SwimForums.net. One thing that I've had trouble with is promoting it to swimmers, since swimmers aren't generally the type of audience that is tech savvy. I've had some luck spamming advertising on Yahoo Answers and Facebook, but other than that it hasn't been much of a success.

Since this forum is a dead forum (it had a few posts a day a while back), I'm going to at least try to reach out to existing members by sending a newsletter of a swimming related article at least once a week. This will keep people informed of my forum.

Promoting offline is pretty much out of the picture, since I like to keep my online life online, and my offline life offline. Any suggestions for reaching this audience?

[Sam]

Looks reasonably active to me? Have you tried local gyms, sports centres?

[Zash]

Looks reasonably active to me? Have you tried local gyms, sports centres?

I haven't really tried, no. And its not that active. It has a few posts, but most of those were made months ago.

[DAMINK™]

I cant see how it could become a success to be honest.
The niche is very limited indeed.
I love the look of the place. And the domain name is really good.
I just cant see how it could get an active community.
Still i wish you the best.

[Robbieava]

If it was a swimming based site, then I assume you swim. If so, just talk at local gyms like stated above. If your in competitions advertise there. If you know they're around then go and hand out little pamphlet about your site.

[DAMINK™]

If it was a swimming based site, then I assume you swim. If so, just talk at local gyms like stated above. If your in competitions advertise there. If you know they're around then go and hand out little pamphlet about your site.

Yea thats a good point. Perhaps trying to hook into local swimming centres etc and try to promote them in return for advertising inside there establishment.
Perhaps put a big focus on teaching children to swim. This would be something i feel would be searched quite a bit.
Like i said though. Its very specific which will make it hard.

[!!* Alone Vampire *!!]

Just go to www.microworkers.com and spend some amount, you will get traffic for sure.

[Brandon]

Honestly, local Y's and what not frequently have postings. I'm not sure exactly, but if you just ninja'd through and posted up your board and left nobody would notice or mind


Eventually, as the swimmers expand you'd be able to have them spread the word to their gyms, etc as well. Other than that, it may not be that swimmers are tech geeks, but rest assured there are tech geeks who are swimmers.

[-[i]Dzire-™]

Here is my suggestion.
You are right sports person are less tech savvy.
Try to attract budding swimmers or try to make it fanclub.

[Renegader]

Pretty nice forum. It's starting to have quite a few members. 1 tip is, you should make a blog as well, which is surely bound to attract more members. Blogspot is a pretty good place to start.

Once again, great forum. I really like it - i'm not too into swimming, though.