Promoting your Community

How much exposure you choose for your ezboard is entirely up to you. We’ve created promotional tools for you to use and have put together some helpful hints to help get your community listed with the major search engines. All of your promotional management is conveniently located right in your My Community tab.

Key Information

• Your community can be as popular as you desire, with great rewards – but it will take a lot of work on your part.
• Your users will be your best source of promotion. If they like your community they will tell their friends.

How to Promote your ezboard

• How to edit and Send “Invite Friends” emails
• How to Send a Promo email
• How to add an ezboard to your ezboard Ring
• Tips on Growing your Community
• Tips on Listing Services

Sending and editing “Invite Friends” emails

1. Log in to your Control Center and click on the My Community tab.
2. Click on the Promote My Community link at the top of the page.
3. Click on the Edit the Invite Friends Email link.
4. Edit the Email Subject and the Message Body
   (NOTE: Please follow instructions listed in that page!)
5. Click on the Save Changes button.

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Send a Promo email

1. Log in to your Control Center and click on the My Community tab.
2. Click on the Promote My Community link at the top of the page.
3. Click on the Send Promotional Email link.
4. Edit Subject and Message Body text. In the Recipients box, enter up to 20 email addresses, separated by a space.
5. Click the Send button.

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Add a community to your Community Ring

1. Log in to your Control Center and click the My Community tab.
2. Manage the correct community and then click on the Promote My Community link and then the ezboard Ring Links link.
3. This will take you to a page where you can add and delete communities to and from your ring.

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Tips on Growing your Community

• Find online and print newsletters that have a similar topic of interest as your community and get your community mentioned in it.
• Find clubs that relate to your community and ask them to participate in your community. (You may also want to take a peek at newsgroups.)
• Form an ezboard ring with several other communities.
• Use a referral service. This system sends friends a polite letter recommending your site.
• Distribute and place fliers and notices in appropriate areas of your neighborhood, park, recreation centers, special interest groups, cafes, etc.
• Ask a friend with a popular web site to place a link of your community on it.
• Tell friends and family about your community. Assign your most outgoing and trustworthy friends as co-admins or moderators of your community. It is more than likely that they will also spread the word about your community.
• Include a link to your community as a signature with your email messages and all of your message board postings.
• Join chat rooms or other online communities and subtly talk about your community there. Try to make friends at other message board communities. People are more willing to come to your site if they already know who you are. (Be careful not to come off like you are spamming…..most people really dislike it!)
• Most communities have a “Link Forum” where you can advertise your own community. Feel free to promote your community at our Public Showcase forum: http://go.ezboard.com/bpublicshowcase66798
• IMPORTANT NOTE: Please remember to be patient and persistent. Your community is similar to a home -- if you want people to come and visit, they need invitations and directions. A large number of “house guests” will soon frequent your community when they stumble upon your welcome mat.

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Tips on listing services

You can use the following free listing services to have your URL web address automatically sent to multiple search engines.

• Submit Express - Submits your URL to 40 top search engines.
• Add Me - Submit, announce, and promote your URL web address for free.
• Promotion Toolkit - 500 sites free! Asks for reciprocal link.
• Easy Submit - Automatically submits your URL to top search engines free!
• For those that want to try something different: You can list your community by categories. To see the list of Web directories available for your community, check out this link: http://submitit.bcentral.com/subcats.htm.
• If you really would like to pay for a Search engine and web promotion service, you can take a look at this link: www.webpositiongold.com/ This service will give your special tips about specific search engines and will make your site more attractive to the search engine spiders.

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