The ultimate question - any suggestions?

[sbrown]

I know it's the question for any new forum but I'm after ideas and help anyway?

After starting a new forum (www.sportsvideoforum.com) and being on the continuous mission of writing content I'm still having the problem of attracting users and getting people to sign up and post.

I appreciate that I really need to get as much information on there as possible but I feel like there are way too many posts by me which makes it look all a little fake. I also know that for me personally to sign up to a forum I need to have the feeling to get involved in a discussion rather than just chat with one person.

So, now I've finished waffling on and stating the obvious, I'm after your help. Any ideas or suggestions on how I can give the forum a kick start would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Steve

 

[Stormraven]

A few people, including myself have gone down the route of paying people to post good content. I know what you mean, it happened to me, most of the content on the site was being written by me. I hired a few posters and they did quite a good job and got some good discussions going. One thing you could do is set up another user account and post under that account a few times. At least it would get some good discussions going.

You could hire some article writers too, that would get more discussions going. It's good fresh content that will make your community shine.

You could add an introductions forum too. I see that some members have introduced themselves in the general forum but in my opinion it's a good idea to keep them separate, but that is just personal preference. Floris coded up a great little mod that prompts a user to fill out their profile/change their avatar and post an introduction thread. I found straight away that it had results. It's such a simple yet effective mod.

http://xenfans.com/threads/product-xenfans-com-welcome-block.730/

Interacting with members also brings them back time after time, dropping them a PM every now and again is a nice way to break the ice

If there's anything else you need to ask, please don't hesitate to do so.