Hey Guys!
Instead of just knocking my head on the wall myself. I thought of crowdsource some good ideas if you guys already crossed a stage of initial traction.
If you can, could you share some of the best strategies/tricks/loops that helped to increase the reach of your discourse platform ?
Thanks.
What type of community are you building? That may help others come up with specific ideas that could work for you.
I recommend you reading the advice that appears in this topic: How did you know you could be successful with a forum? 
It’s an discussion forum around ideas and solutions related to UN sustainable goals
One of the main thing we want to focus is urbanisation and public transportation. Imagine your city or street has some problem… instead of Waiting for government to solve this, People could crowdsource ideas and work on themselves
And also people could discuss about ideas that Not tied to a city but generic problems as well.
Thanks for sharing that Sid!
I went to read all those comments. What I understand is it answers the below
But am 
into it that we wanted discourse , and all the features a forum needed is there. Now it’s about how do we make it more active. I know it may be lame or generic question but I would like to listen to someone who was already in a situation like me and a single hack has get the forum grow a lot. It is so clear from discourse that if we can get one user to sign up, the features (threaded replied, badgesand mailing list) going to make him sticky and refer new users.
But before that how do we increase the initial growth?
Out of my impatience, I ran a facebook ad targeting city planners to provide their ideas on public transportation problem. Got 7 signups at a cost of 1-2USD. But I am looking for few more growth strategy buddy…
The very important thing to remember (which not everyone wants to hear) is that you can’t really market a community into being successful. You’re either solving a need or want for people (in which case they’re likely to find you on their own) or you’re not going to succeed.
I’d recommend doing some reading on feverbee.com to make sure you’ve set yourself up to succeed.
Oh thanks Hawk for a wise reminder!
The link you shared seems to have some thoughtful contents to read > How To Build An Online Community: The Ultimate List Of Resources (2013) | FeverBee
Will check it out. And keep experimenting new ways…
Share your finding here. It would be great to know what works for you on discourse.
I test new ways of engaging every single day.
Keep in mind that Discourse is just a tool in your community strategy.
You have to find the right balance between the business objective and the community members needs
Last Rich’s book will put you on the right track as well.
Hi guys,
i noticed that with the https://www.peopledatalabs.com/ api we can get targeted e-mails.
I was wondering if someone could work out a plugin or feature that would invite those targeted emails to the forum ?
Is this doable ?
Best,
I must say I agree with this. But the question is, when is the right time to start marketing?
Hmmm.
I’d say what Hawk shared does not have anything to do with Marketing in the normal sense, because as she pointed out:
And once you’re doing that, then:
And so ‘marketing’ doesn’t happen, instead you build/manage your community.
The word used here matters as it indicates a mindset shift. Communities I have marketed or I have seen being marketed have almost always failed. Think instead in terms of solving a need or problem, and then the community will succeed, not ‘grow’, but succeed.
So when I see Jeff @codinghorror 1.6billion deal 
and Jeff has liked my comment before. I wanted to put this comment again hahhaha. That Jeff gave a thumbs up!
Been 4years using discourse. Launched discourse quite a few times and now building a entrepreneurs community under our Low code saas platform. I felt tremendously happily that we are using discourse always! The open platform! Not sure when discourse going to be another unicorn!