A tropical vacation in The Bahamas!

[JanaeK]

I just got done with designing my website Bahamas Spot Buzzer | Ultimate information and entertainment guide on living and loving life in The Bahamas and I want everyone on the forum, visitors as well as members, to visit.

One question: Currently I have an About Us, Business Directory and Contact Us Pages. I will have to focus on getting businesses to sign up but now I want your opinions on what feature to introduce next. Either:
1. Calendar of Events
OR
2. Forum

My goal is to get more visitors to the site and based on the choice then I will start to advertise.

The website will offer entertainment and travel information and will cater to tourists as well as locals because The Bahamas is made up of 15 inhabited islands so a native of one particular island will be considered a visitor on another.

Come see what all The Bahamas has to offer!

[GamerGripz]

id suggest giving the website a tropical feel to it. right now it seems like just a normal webpage, make it stick out and appealing to people by making it feel tropical. Add some pictures of the bahamas or something like that. Also the start up part will be hard, once the site is rolling there wont be a problem with businesses adding to the directory but starting off with such little viewers a month and no businesses is tough. Try doing a lot of SEO to get better page rank and more visitors. I suggest contacting businesses in the Bahamas personally through email and ask them to freely submit their business to help it get up and growing. It wont grow itself by posting on forums asking people that have no interest in visiting the bahamas to check out the site. You said you will start advertising once you get more visitors, well first off, visitors wont just start coming without SEO and advertising so if you want to do it cheaply you will have to spend a lot of time learning SEO and advertising and then putting your knowledge to work by doing it yourself. It will take a lot of hours and work to start seeing better results to your website. Try writing a few articles about your site and submit them to travel sites and do blog commenting and forum posting on traveling/bahamas related websites. Also try to contact the owners/managers of traveling blogs and ask them to write a blog/article about your site and post it up on theirs.

I started and ran a forum for a while and did my own SEO and advertising for the website, I find it fun but it will take a lot of work and effort. Sites dont just run and populate all by their selves - just remember that - so it will take a lot of work and dedication for you to make it work.

[JanaeK]

Thanks for the suggestions. I am going to add a cluster of mini photos/graphics to the home page in the coming days. I plan on adding to the site as I go along, however the site as it is now is just temporary so that I can attract visitors/ businesses to the directory.

Im working at the SEO, so far I've listed the site to Google but have yet to list with bing and yahoo. The directory has SEO tags as well as the site.

After a quick listing of pros and cons I'm leaning towards introducing the Forum as my 2nd feature.

I will target tourists that are in The Bahamas encouraging them to visit the site and share their vacation experience (forum) and search for businesses they may want to visit (directory). Also, I will try to find those tourists that are coming to The Bahamas so they can ask questions etc (forum) and search the listings (directory) to assist with the planning of their vacation.

So the forum and business directory will compliment each other.

[GamerGripz]

Exactly that would be the way to go. Just do a lot of forum posting, blog commenting, directory submission, article submission, and use social media. I would recommend following people on Twitter that follow people such as @VisitTheBahamas @BahamasWeekly @Bahamaspress because the people that follow those twitters will be the people that are interested in the bahamas or live there now.