What's the best way to start activity on a new forum?

[dragonhawk28]

I am starting a new forum (www.sportmemorylane.com) and want to get some discussions going. I am working on getting traffic to start coming to the site, but that doesn't mean people will post.

Anyone have any advice on how to get people to start posting? Thanks everyone

 

[dragonhawk28]

dunno why this is stuck at the bottom with only 2 views......:crap:

 

[ImagesAndWords]

Hey man,
If you have you have some $$ to invest, I highly recommend paying for one of the paid forum posting services. Google it and you will find a few services that offer packages of like 100, 300 or 1000 posts for a given price.

The posts will be on topic and entered in by real humans, who will sign up under lots of different usernames on your forum. Nice way to get started.

 

[Laura]

My best advice:

Start a niche blog and when you start to get a consistent volume of comments, you know you have enough interest and traffic to possibly start a forum.

Activity breeds activity and a busy blog is FAR better than a fairly empty forum with some paid posts. Blogs are much easier to monetize, too. Forums are born from demand by consumers - not because admins want to create one. There are thousands of sports forums out there - what makes yours remarkable?

Don't mean to be harsh, but communities aren't created - they develop on their own and as the owner you respond to their growth by changing formats or adjusting the rules. I just hate seeing people put in work that will get no return, and forums are pretty much that kind of time suck (usually). The the same amount of effort into a niche blog and you are more likely to get somewhere.

Laura

 

[necromancer]

Hey man,
If you have you have some $$ to invest, I highly recommend paying for one of the paid forum posting services. Google it and you will find a few services that offer packages of like 100, 300 or 1000 posts for a given price.

The posts will be on topic and entered in by real humans, who will sign up under lots of different usernames on your forum. Nice way to get started.

He can always head over to DP and pay someone .10 cents for each on-topic semi-logical post. Many would gladly do it.

 

[dragonhawk28]

Thanks everyone. I posted the link in a forum that I participate in and that brought some life into it. Hopefully I can start getting some new signups now that there are conversations going on.
Sport Memory Lane - Index

 

[cardine]

My best advice:

Start a niche blog and when you start to get a consistent volume of comments, you know you have enough interest and traffic to possibly start a forum.

Activity breeds activity and a busy blog is FAR better than a fairly empty forum with some paid posts. Blogs are much easier to monetize, too. Forums are born from demand by consumers - not because admins want to create one. There are thousands of sports forums out there - what makes yours remarkable?

Don't mean to be harsh, but communities aren't created - they develop on their own and as the owner you respond to their growth by changing formats or adjusting the rules. I just hate seeing people put in work that will get no return, and forums are pretty much that kind of time suck (usually). The the same amount of effort into a niche blog and you are more likely to get somewhere.

Laura

Great post. I've had a couple of moderately sized forums, and all of them were created out of demand. It is very hard to succeed otherwise, as people will only come back if they are genuinely interested.