It seems to me that forums fall victim to a specific catch-22 / paradox / whatever you want to call it: "You can't get posts without members, you can't get members without posts." So when you're starting a forum from scratch, what do you do? Fake posts seem like one solution, but there must be a better way. Are there any sites / communities / services that help you jumpstart a forum? Thanks.
Call all of your friends (real life friends), ask them to sign up and start posting. Post quality, informative articles - this will also help with the search engines. When people land on your forum and all the see is "what is your favorite song" - its unlikely they will register. Post embedded videos - videos make people stay on the site longer.
By embedded videos, do you mean in forum posts, or on the forum index page? If it's not on the index page it seems like it wouldn't be much help in keeping people from bouncing. thanks for the tips.
That's pretty much what it boils down to. It's hard to jump start a forum. You can try asking your friends to post, buying posts, trading posts with another new forum, or creating fake users and posting.
You may want to take a two step approach. First create a site that draw people to it because of your content. Once you have enough visitors then launch your forum. Utilizing a poll helps draw interest and user interaction. If you filling a need in your niche let others know it. How do you differentiate your forum from others? Be controversial, have an opinion in your posts. Be careful trying to monetize your site before you have an adequate audience.
nobody likes an empty forum & members look for a reason to participate in threads to kick start a forum you might need some virtual posters to bring it to life you can also try post exchange sites in which you will post on other forums & the owner of those forums will post on yours in this way you can make things look more natural and it will be free as well. postloop is one such site if you are looking for post exchange
If your starting a forum in a niche which you are already an active participant then you can ask your contacts and friends that you have made within that niche to sign up. For example, if your web site was about "General Marketing" like this particular forum.... then stick around here and make some friends, visit their blogs and their web sites. Interact and communicate with them. Then when your forum is ready, you will have a bunch of friends who are already in your target audience ready to invite.