Not sure if this is the right spot to put this, but is there any free forum listings our there to get our forum out to people?

Thanks

Not sure about the quality of some of these but this will get you started:

Forum Virus
http://www.forumvirus.com/

ForumDigger
http://www.forumdigger.com/

Perfect Forum Directory
http://www.perfectforumdirectory.com/

ForumFox
http://www.forumfox.com/

Forumbase
http://www.forumbase.org/

Forum-directory.com
http://www.forum-directory.com/

:thumbsup2 Thanks so much! :thumbsup2

Also, you may want to look into paying people to signup to your forums and then posting. Say about $0.05 per post that needs a minimum number of characters or you could get your friends to post for free. The reasons I say this is because just getting your forum out there will not really make it active that quick. If you want signups quicker, then you have to make it look active to the users which will make them more likely to signup to your forums.

Also submit your site to web directories and article directories, it will be very good for your site in the long run

Angie - I haven't promoted a forum (like this one) but I have pimped a new niche social media site if that helps. They're pretty closely related so see if anything here will help you:

We did several things to promote the site, had media coverage, took out ads etc - but the one grassroots thing I did that worked really well was to secure a targeted mailing list and use it with a second promotional offer to generate forum sign ups. Here's what I did:

Since the social media site targeted an established industry, the challenge was how to break through the clutter and attract attention. I didn't want to spend a lot of energy on creating these snazzy promotions only to have them fall flat so I decided to go where the demographic went to buy goods and services.

I researched three ecommerce sites that sold products the forum readership would be interested in.

Contacted each and offered free advertising for a year in exchange for their email list.

From there I wandered over to a man who was a well known consultant in their industry and asked if he'd give me copies of his ebook to anyone who joined the forum. Also offered him ad space for a year. Got a yes.

Armed with email lists and a free ebook, I sent a message, advertised the forum, and dangled the free ebook as a bonus. A "send this to a friend" message was included and a full media campaign done to promote the partnership with the consultant and what we were doing.

It worked. The forum got a couple hundred signups over a 2 month period. We know those sign ups were a result of the email because we tracked the downloads of the ebook.

Obviously I've simplified this a great deal, the whole process took about 60 days to set up and execute before we ever got the first sign up. But we decided to go this route rather than try to develop a top ten list and submit to Digg or rely on simple press releases because it used an established email list.

That email list and the fact we played on the two partnerships gave us automatic credibility. " Well - if Company A has partnered with this new guy, they must be ok".

How many times have you accepted a situation or product because you knew the person promoting it? Bunches I bet.

Good luck with your new forum! :)