I'm planning to build a forum but how do I get visitors? Since the forum will be new, even if I advertise who would want to join an empty forum. Would you? So how do I establish it? Do I make some fake users, post as other users myself and after hmmm maybe > 100 posts or threads advertise to show that it is a growing forum? What should I do? So somebody guide me ( 0 to 100 ) about how to establish a forum.
create two or three forums... post some things there good quality I mean.advertise on some sites. if your contents are not good your users will not come back... 77 Ways to Get Traffic http://www.anglesanddangles.com/downloadsfree/77ways.pdf 101 ways to get more traffic http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=246573&highlight=traffic
Look around the net for seemingly abandoned forums with similar subjects to the one you want to start and buy them. I say seemingly abandoned because in some cases these are setup by people who paid for years worth of hosting/domain registration in advance with high hopes and they'll likely be happy just to recoup some of their losses meaning you get them for cheap. Combine all of their databases into one. Most of them will probably be running open source software like phpBB, SMF, or software such as vbullitin. Most of these have automated converters to convert forums to whatever software you want to use. Viola, you no longer have an empty forum. Now, the tricky part is how to go about redirecting requests coming from the old forums to the correct threads on teh new forum. Because the threads are coming from multiple forums, you're probably going to have thread/post id conflicts, so it's not as simple as redirecting the thread/post id from the old forum to the same place on the new. You'll have to maintain a database with a mapping for the old topic/post id to the new id, each time you get a request on the old domains you have to determine what the domain was, lookup the id for that domain and that post/thread in teh mapping table, then redirect to the new thread/post on the new domain.
Personally I am against making "ghost" users or hiring others to make posts. That's just how I feel. So when I started my forum. I post great content day after day, everyday. I still post great content and my forum is slowly growing. Being really friendly to your members and becoming friends with them is one key to building a successful forum. I recommend trying to get the off topic forum busy. The rest of the forum will follow. Also, don't make too many forums at first. Let your forum grow first before adding new sections.
Look for other forums in your niche, probably those that are still new as yours, then ask the admin for exchange of posts, that will increase the posts for a start and also having some activities on both side of forums.
You can try outsourcing or also you can ask some of your friends to keep on posting in their threads and as them to start discussing topics in that forum..
Just try to improve visitors and PR..Many of people how comments on blogs or forums their major focus is to get a link back to their site..Don't make hard and fast rules in the beginning..Visit the sites of the visitors by clicking their signature this way they will come back in order to get traffic.
Make 10-20 quality topics, and get two or three active users to join. They reply, make new topics, and then get a few more. By the time you hit 50 users, you don't face the problem any more.
Gets Lots of Posts which are controvertial and will make your Visitors inquisite and they will becoem a member of your forum. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1631568 Regards.
Be prepared to work hard for at least a year before you see significant activities in the forum. Make useful posts as much as you can. Get your friends involved. Participate in other forums. Do SEO.
You welcome I agree with you on this one. Its going to take a lot of hard work and SEO plays a major role in getting traffic and users you never would have reached without it.