Hey there, Just now started a forums in my blog! http://forums.geeks4share.com I know it's very difficult to build traffic to a forum and keep the forum active. That's why I am posting this here. If you have any suggestion for building a forum, let me know. It would be very helpful for me.
First of all you must post some quality post in each topic so that your visitors can start discussion (who likes an empty forum?). Then join some related forums and tell peoples about your posts on your forum ask them for their comments, suggestions or simply to introduce themselves on you forum. It takes very long time to see any traffic or discussions on a new forum. So you must have patience. Add as much quality information as possible to your forum (create multiple accounts if there are many categories like one for seo discussion, another for affiliate discussions). -Ashish Patel affiliate marketer & blogger
- Don't cheap out on forum software. Vbulletin or gtfo. - Build an attractive theme for the site. Nobody likes a cookie-cutter site with bad graphics and shitty colors. - Trim ALL the fat from your forum. Don't install a widget just because you feel like it. Nobody cares about their local weather or tag clouds. Install clean-looking widgets that deliver pertinent information. - A good rep and ranking up system does wonders. - Special avatars and titles as rewards helps. - If possible, implement some sort of user networking. User tagging is great. Make sure users are notified when quoted by others. - Keep the forum categories to a MINIMUM. Some forum admins make too many categories, this only inflates the forum and makes it look empty. - Use a CMS and send organic traffic there FIRST. Plan ahead - if your forum grows, it can become confusing for new users and your bounce rate will skyrocket. - Make a "site improvement forum" and ask users how to improve. Answer every poster and implement changes if you can.
The design looks good to me, clean and simple. As the others said, try to fill the empty sections with some content.