Using Social Media to Grow My XenForo Forum (87 Registered Users) – Looking for Advice from Indie Hackers
Hey everyone 👋
A few months ago I launched forofox.com, a community forum built with XenForo.
The goal is to create an active discussion space around technology, software development, AI, freelancing, entrepreneurship, and related topics (mainly in Spanish but open to everyone).
Current status:
87 registered users
Decent organic traffic thanks to SEO
But user growth has slowed down significantly
My main growth channel so far:
I’ve been heavily using social media (Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook) — posting useful content, tips, tools, and thoughts related to the forum topics, with the aim of driving people back to the forum.
Questions for the Indie Hackers community:
Have you successfully used social media as the primary channel to grow a forum or community? What worked best?
What strategies would you recommend to go from ~80-100 users to 500+ active members?
Is content marketing + SEO + social media the right mix, or am I spending too much time on the wrong platforms?
Any specific experiences with XenForo (pros/cons vs Discourse, etc.)?
I’m open to all kinds of honest feedback, criticism, and suggestions. Really want to learn from those who have been through this.
Thanks in advance! 🚀
Honest read: social media is probably the wrong lever for a forum at 87 users, and reaching for it is the most common mistake at this stage.
Forums don't die from lack of traffic, they die from arriving empty. Someone clicks your link, sees threads with no replies, and leaves, so social media at this stage mostly burns your one impression with each visitor. The bottleneck isn't awareness, it's that there's not yet a reason to stay or come back.
The harder issue is scope. Technology, software development, AI, freelancing, entrepreneurship is five communities, and at 87 users you can't reach critical mass in any of them. A forum feels alive when someone posts and gets answers within hours. Spread across five topics, each gets a trickle, and every section looks dead. Pick one, ideally the narrowest where you personally have the most credibility, and let the forum be visibly "the place for X in Spanish" before widening.
The Spanish angle is your actual asset and it's buried. English-language dev communities are saturated (Reddit, Discord, HN, dev.to). Spanish-speaking developers and freelancers have far fewer quality spaces. "The Spanish-language community for [one specific thing]" is a real wedge. "A forum about tech topics" is not.
What actually works at this stage, instead of social: go where those people already are (Spanish dev Discords, r/programacion, Latin American tech Twitter) and be useful there first, then invite individually. Also seed the forum yourself, post real questions, answer them, make it feel inhabited. Twenty active people beat 500 registrations.
Which of those five topics do you know best, and are you seeding discussions yourself right now? Those two answers decide the next month.
Hi there, I hadn't read your comment yet. But I think it's a great suggestion—maybe narrowing down the topics and focusing on just a few would be better than having so many empty threads. I've started some threads myself, and I've also participated in various discussions started by others. To be honest, I’ve been lucky—I’ve had active members on the forum. I share what they post in various WhatsApp groups, and thanks to that, they’ve made sales. Even though I haven’t earned anything yet, I’m interested in seeing others succeed. One thing I implemented—and which helped me get my first sign-ups—was giving away free memberships. That’s kept several people active on the forum (about 10), but obviously I need a lot more interaction. That’s why I thought about large-scale advertising, but it would require a big budget, and to be honest, I’m a bit scared of that. I’ll take your comment into account and keep working on reaching people, even if it’s one at a time. I’ve had the best results through Facebook groups. Reddit is tricky because as soon as I post the link, I get banned—even if I’ve answered 50 questions beforehand. I’ll also focus on Quora, where so far they haven’t deleted my link when I post it.
With 87 registered users, I would focus on the behavior that makes the forum valuable before adding more channels. Track first post or reply, seven-day return, and member-to-member response time, then promote the discussions that already create repeat participation.
I'm curious what convinced you to prioritize social media before doubling down on activity inside the forum itself.
Was there a specific signal that made you believe the next bottleneck is acquisition rather than engagement?
Well, I've done both. I've focused quite a bit on the credibility of my forum and its structure. I've also been focusing on social media lately to try to reach more people, because I think that no matter how good the structure is, if there aren't any views, nobody will know about it.
Makes sense.
The interesting signal will probably be whether increased visibility turns into the right kind of participation, not just more traffic.
Those two can look similar early but lead to very different outcomes.
Yes, of course, a large number of registered users have remained active and are posting on the forum. But I need even more to create an ecosystem where people are writing, posting, and selling. What do you recommend?
Appreciate the question, Luis.
I think the answer depends on the specific bottleneck you're seeing, and I'd rather understand the context properly than give a generic answer here.
What's the best email to reach you on?
Here contacto@forofox.com
Thanks! I’ve just sent it over.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts whenever you have a chance.