Getting people to post on forums

beginning a forum

[Booington]

Hi

I'm new here. Need some friendly advice.

I have just started a forum, I have put it on the site 2 weeks ago and I'm finding it difficult to attract people to the forum and also when people DO go on there, it just comes up with "guest" and they don't post anything!

So far I've got a few friends to post stuff on there and I have about 2 or 3 different usernames, and I've been adding posts everyday. What am I doing wrong?

Please advise as I am new to this. Are there any other (free) ways to attract people to forums?

[Beagle]

There are others here who can give you much more input than I can, but I just wanted to mention that if you just started the forum two weeks ago, you were hitting right at the holidays. I mod on a big, busy, well-established forum, and traffic dropped to almost nothing just preceding and during the holidays. People have been coming back gradually over the last several days. So don't assume that these first couple of weeks have been "normal" in any way.

[emodo]

The best way is to post some major scoop on the forums, something to get a digg or slashdot mention. This will get tons of people to come to the forum and hopefully some will stay.

[Mistra]

Offer them big money to entice them to post.

Organize a special lucky draw for members who have more than 1,000 posts.

First prize = 1,000,000 Indonesian Rupiahs.
Second prize = 500,000 Indian Rupees.

I am sure many would be interested to post.

[rogerd]

Here's a link from the Community Building Library [webmasterworld.com] that may be helpful: Starting a Web Community - Care and Feeding of a New Forum [webmasterworld.com]

Check there for other discussions, too. And, of course, feel free to ask questions here. Welcome to WebmasterWorld, Booington!

[happyslob]

Hi,

It seems to help to do what you're doing now - some message boards allow you to post the URL of your forum. That way you'll get some interested people visiting.

Take care,
Christina