So I finally got done with a contest form I was making. Basically the gist of it is that you sign up and your name gets drawn. To do this you don't even have to be a member. But as an incentive for visitors to become members I said that Registered users get their name entered twice and have the ability to choose what prize they wanted to win. Now I have a lot of new members but none of them posting, this was expected beforehand, but now I need a way to get the members to stay at my forum. Any Advice?
It's a video game forum? If so, teach them how to stop playing video games and start picking up chicks. They will stay for that.
That's definitely the hard part about communities... getting people to sign up and stay active. You really need to capture them when they first sign up. What are you doing to get word out about the contest/forum?
I posted the contest on a couple of those sweepstake/contest sites and have gotten a lot of traffic from those.
What you can do to get visitors to stay, is create a compelling video of some sort. This will get your visitors interested, and want to know more.