Title says it all, my site has a forum and gets from 600 to 900 people a day. But so far about no one has posted on the forum. How can I get more people to post there or is there a service I can use that will help jump start it or just plain and simple fake users and post so people see more stuff on there and want to join?
Start by creating a number of accounts and having conversation with yourself. Once you make it look like your forum is already active, find relevant social networking spaces (groups, pages, etc) and invite people into certain discussions.
Some niches just won't attract conversation, but assuming yours will you'll need to spend some time faking conversation. Get some friends to help make it look diverse, or I've seen fiverr gigs for forum posting. Used to do that my self but it can be a lot of work, especially in tougher niches. I guess you could also advertise your forum as its own entity as well, to draw in forum posters.
That's great. You need to invest in manual posting now. Forums are really hard to promote at first, but then it generates content on auto-pilot for you.
Op,Do this,but run several Internet browsers,so you can quickly switch between accounts,without logging off. chrome firefox safari opera internet explorer etc.
Thanks for the Fiverr idea! I use it for so much but never thought of forum post, I found one gig for 30 post, this should help out and after getting a few different gigs I will see how well it works. My site is a diet site that when things are posted to it ranks well, so I know the forum could do a lot of good.
Get some action on your forum and also provide useful information to people. This is the best way to get a forum going.
Depending on the niche, get some people skilled in the industry to write posts (like for Fishing you'd get someone explaining what bait to use for which fish etc) and pay them per post (replies as well). Get them to interact with each other so it makes good discussions. Then find people interested, and they should start asking questions. From there on, make it like a competition until it picks up, with some rewards. This is the pricier approach
Add call to action banners, links to your webu (under posts for example) Create fake users and discuss on your forum Do keyword research of long-longtail words..if i have site about loans i will find something like that: fake loan where to get loan loan provider "name with typping mistake" And than create threads like - "Is this loan fake?", "Where can I get loan 200 dollars?", "I let money from Barclais" With your fake users, create some posts, which can start "flame discuss"
Make it look like an invite-only forum, collect emails and then email that you open registration for 24 hrs. It will be a bomb.
Get some fake activity + don't forget to SEO every few posts with relevant keywords in the title and the body of the post,so more and more users will find your forum naturally... I don't know what your forum is about,but if your niche is based around on a hot trends,start some controversial topics,that are likely to go viral!Combine this with some social marketing and you are very likely to double your visitors within few weeks and get some active forum users! Hope that helps!
I find running them a hassle with the spam that comes with running vbulletin. I try to integrate by showing the RSS feed on the main blog.
The site/forum is a diet site, that is for quick weight loss. This thing has been my baby for the past 6 months, and the pages/post get a good amount of hits but the forum has been sitting dead for the most part. I was posting on it for a little bit and still try but get busy and never get to the forum part, but I think this could add great power to the site, seeing as I will get loads of free content. But you buys have given some great ideas!! Just ordered 2 gigs on Fiverr Will be making banners for the rest of the site, and having them on the post. <-- GREAT IDEA! And upping my post on 5 to 6 accounts and keep ordering gig on fiverr for the next month and see where it falls after that. Thats the game plan so far. . .
