I just launched a new forum on one of my websites Monday. So far, I've gotten 2 people to sign up but no one has posted besides me. I've run two other forums before, one moderately successful (it was for a very small niche hobby, can't expect many people to post.)
I'm trying out a few different things right now to drive traffic to the board. The first thing I did was put a big button link to the forum on every page of the site. A few minutes ago I added links to the newest thread topics on the top of every page (this might actually work )
Once I get the initial momentum going then I'm going to be doing a mailing to my opt-in list, which should bring in even more users.
Are there any other obvious methods people have tried? I know I can, and I will be able to turn this into a very active forum. Right now the site pulls in about 5000-6000 uniques a day. I think most "unsuccesful" forums fail because they simply don't have good traffic sources.
I'm interested in hearing methods some of you other guys who have built successful forums have used.
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