What is the best way to get people involved in a forum?

[John_Su]

I have a forum at my new nba site, and i get decent traffic to the site, but no one has been contributing to the forums.

although the forum has only been up for three days, i would like to how i could focus the forums and get people to join and maybe contribute.

any thoughts?

much thanks.

[bill]

Get your friends to post some good questions and then answer them yourself. Or do it yourself...make up a few new users and start talking to yourself. Nobody likes to walk into an empty room and start a conversation if it doesn't look like there'll be many participants.

[etechsupport]

Also discuss about your forum in other online forums and get listed in different forum directories, this will help you to get few members on your board.

[Quadrille]

Whatever your forum is about, there are already hundreds of active forums. So, to make a mark, you need to spell out what is special and unique about your forum.

If it's attached to your site, then use the site to encourage feedback and discussion; eventually, the forum will generate its own.

Also, avoid pop-ups, flash, or ANYTHING that might put off potential visitors; start simple and clean, then you can develop as you wish, once you've generated an atmosphere and content that's worth visiting.

Be helpful and positive, but don't overkill every thread - give people space.

Keep the place clean; invisibly delete and ban spammers and trolls - later, you might want to see how your visitors prefer to hanlde them, but to start with they are pure distrction, and will deter new folk.

But it'll take time ...

[AjiNIMC]

Start highlighting topics on various pages.

[John_Su]

yaw i have a site already, and the site is getting good traffic already and it is improving daily. still i am having a huge issue with sign-ups and new topics. right now the whole forum thing seems very stagnant.

i was thinking about migrating the whole thing to a news/rumor submission setup instead of having a forum. not sure though. still the forum has been up only for 1 week. i just thought i would get a better response than what it has received so far.

[AjiNIMC]

It is a big fight. Recently one of our NIMC/AIM professor who is now in IIM-A posted in our college forum. I highlighed it and it spreaded like a fire. I got extra registrations and many who never posted then posted to welcome him.

In other words get big guests to your forums.

[TCMEngine]

You may try this link : [webmasterworld.com...]

It's worth visit.