Promote an Off-Topic Forum

I am looking to promote my off topic forum, but I don't know how should I approach this. It is the one in my sig. I wonder do you guys have any suggestions on what I should do?

I already create as little forums as possible so it doesn't look so empty.

 

Off topic forums are, from what I hear, some of the hardest forums to start up.

 

It is, I think maybe the best thing to do is to start a posting contest.

 

The #1 thing you'll need to do is make it at least appear active. Get some friends to post, do post exchanges, etc. - just make sure you're driving traffic to the forum at the same time through promoting, advertisements, forum signatures, and word of mouth (such as your contest). People won't join unless they think it is active, so make it active through the methods I briefly mentioned above. (you can see more tips on the blog in my sig. )

 

One more thing I could add is to download and install fake statistic from vb.org. It will let you to put any numbers on whats going on box. making people think you have a very large members.
I'll join your forum to help boost the activity a bit.

 

I don't think that is very effective.

 

Try offline promotion.

 

Ya, exactly. You need to have a lot of friends posting on a daily basis or you're screwed.

 

Reading this article i remember a story.
Some beer company hired 2 sales managers for a job in their India department(advertising alcohol in India is not allowed). The one guy said:
"Its impossible- we have 100 mil. of people that are not drinking beer! How am i supposed to make them start drinking it, without advertising?"
the other said:
"This is a huge market- we have 100 mil. of people ready to start drinking beer!"



I actually think off topic forums aren't that hard to promote. You can promote them in many different niches. Only content is important.

 

I guess I should constantly post and perhaps pay people to post to make it active.