How to attract people in joining a discussion forum?

Hi,

I've started a forum for java students and developers recently here: www.javaforums.net but there aren't any people that like to discuss / post so i'm wondering what the best next step is to take to get people started to post?


My blog reaches ~1000 people a day/average and i've blogposted there to visit my new forum and got ~300/400 sign ups on the forum in 3 days time but they rarely (never) poss so how can i make it so that they do post instead of only signing up on the forums and lurk?

Im willing to do a partnership to help me with my forums (eg place your ads on my blog/forum etc) as long as i can make my forum better than it is now any tips?

 

That forum could be very helpful for Java students. Why don't you promote to Java students in different schools.

 

Well, i already promoted the site on my university but i have no idea how do promote it on other college/uni's. My goal is to make my forum a good/ friendly and informative community for people that want to learn java. I'm happy to answer but with no one posting it looks stupid to reply on your own post.

 

You need to seed the forum. Seed the forum with interesting conversations, questions, and answers and eventually people will come.

 

the first thing you need to have is an interesting forum. then try advertise it or hire someone who could post in it.

 

The user who posted this thread is banned...um, is it just me or has any1 else been noticing A LOT of banned ppl lately lol

 

That was unexpected, especially when that user has such a high post count. Might as well keep contributing to this thread...

My answer:
You could pay people to post in your forum until it starts attracting users on it's own. I see people advertising this service in the "Buy/Sell" section of DP.

 

A great tool that I have used in the past is forum post robot (no affiliation), it will seed conversations for you from yahoo answers and automatically post them to your forum. This way new visitors will have interesting content to read and stimulate conversation.

 

Thats a bummer, thread starter got banned!
I was gonna suggest advertise on student magazines. Those generally cheap. Also use student bulletin boards in different universities.

 

That's the late night laugh i was looking for

 

Hey you just made 100 posts, congrats pal

 

I made a booboo in the best (new rules) but im back again thanks for your replies!

 

you could offer some java source code , java learing cases to attractive students.

 

I already publish all my open source software on the site & forum. I also help students with their programming problems but not a lot go there so not a lot to answer.

 

You can consider advertising in more established forums and attracting some of the active posters to contribute to your site. You can also foster a stronger community spirit by responding to each post in a friendly manner.

 

Well, i do respond friendly to people that have a question so thats not really a problem since i like to program and help anyway. As for advertising in other related forums, thats a good idea indeed. Might try that one out. Cheers

 

you can just give them quality downloads which are unique
bt you shud have such

 

Give them something special after certain postings... nothing is free...he..he....

 

Did you try running contests? Sometimes they help. You can do a programming contest. Try to get the Java teachers involved in the judgement, then they would do the marketing for you

 

You’ve heard of article writers right? Well there are also people that will post on your forum for you for a price, but making sure its good correct content that will promote a discussion is not so easy, you never know who the poster is.

It might be worth a trying, but I really recommend seeding your own threads, at least you can guarantee the threads will be up to your standard