How do you encourage people to post?

[Sunfrog]

How do you encourage people to post?

[Submerge]

Try to spark a discussion on a controversial subject. Something people just have to reply to to get there opinion out.

[Arthur07]

Run some sort of competition or offer to post on their website, if they do on yours.

[webslinger]

Don't be too tough or have too many rules to start with. Having a section for people to buy/sell/trade often helps. You can also have a freebies section with free ebooks, free services like Stumble me and i'll Stumble you and all that malarky. Perhaps find a similar forum that is closing and steal their users?

[NetHoster]

I think the best way is to relax on any link rules; people like to place links in their posts, and when the rules specify or limit that ability, it creates an unfriendly, less collaborative atmosphere.

[Tyler]

I think the best way to encourage others to post is to simply have a lot of discussion; sooner or later there will be a topic that somebody will feel the need to reply to.

This often leads to a "chicken and the egg" conundrum, therefore if your forum is new, you either need to write a lot of posts yourself to get discussion started, or else hire a forum populating service.

[legend]

I believe that if your forum is on a good topic, that hasn't already been milked to death then you will realize growth easily.

[CyberBoy]

I'm pretty sure getting people to join and post on forums is much easier for bigger forums due to the amount of members they already have logging in everyday. More people is attracted to crowded forums so I'm guessing work on getting a lot of active members. Probably some Adsense promotion?

Contests sometimes runs well too but unfortunately, once it's over the members leave and never come back. This is the sad part. :confused:

[MafiaMaster]

Encouraging people to post is probably the hardest part about running a forum. However, I can say this...If you can create a topic that really catches people's eye, they will not only sign up, but start posting. And once they make that FIRST post, getting them to post a second, third, fourth, etc time is so much easier. It's like making the post is hard, but the second and on is a piece of cake. The only example I can give you of a topic that really helped my forum is this topic on gay marriage (http://www.debateful.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=100) on my debate forum. It started off small, but when it got heated, when there were arguments, people suddenly started coming. Debates grew, people argued, and that's why, 89 posts later, it's STILL active.

[Konvict Aftermath]

1. Competitions where there are prizes for posting.

2. Extra Benefits for members who reach a certain post count.

[MafiaMaster]

Competitions do have their benefits, but I am not really sure if I like using them over a long period of time. What competitions are good for is showing a burst of posts on your forum so that they look incredible active. But, what happens when the contest is over? Will people stick around? I am not so sure in that regard only because I have seen other people.

I remember when EarnersForum.com had their massive contest. They were offering off some amazing prizes. However, once the contest was over, the site began to deteriorate again. I even left the site after the contest was over because it did not offer me what I needed. I was one of the many people that left the forum after the contest. Was the contest a good idea, though? Yeah, I think so.

What you want to try and do is get people to post on your forum not because there is a reward for it (such as a competition), but because they are genuinely interested in that particular topic. So, that is why, like Konvict Aftermath said, extra benefits for members might be better. If they reach, say, five hundred posts, give them a different color for their username. It is something to set them apart from the other members and that will drive them to post more. They want to be the leaders.

[Tyler]

I agree Mafia - it is not the wisest move to depend solely on contests because then you're kind of committing yourself to having to always give stuff out.

You mention EarnersForum - that forum died for many reasons, but it is indeed a good example of how traffic can die after a contest.

However, to be fair, WickedFire also held a contest, but are still huge today. A lot of it isn't about the aftereffects of the contest itself, but actually of what the forum itself delivers.

I'm obviously biased here, but EarnersForum "failed" (I put it in quotations because it still has a bit of lingering traffic) not because of the contest but because of how their forum is actually run and put together.

Wickedfire is an extremely rude forum full of trolls, liars, and cheaters, but it's done well because it targets a tight niche of affiliate marketers, and the mood and theme of the forum is all about trolling and acting like a punk, which seems to fit a lot of people's desires so it has done well.

[profitline]

Tyler, I see publisherspotforum as a authority forum and with a group of active admin, moderators who works hard to get things around here. I see it will flourish, ain't you going to offer revenue adsense sharing?