I recently launched a web forum for my hosting company. What are the best ways to get some good traffic to the forums? I don't think linking an empty forum to the main website is a good idea. Spamming the forum on other forums doesn't seem good to me either.

What is the forum about, just standard hosting help? You could try getting some of your current users over there posting (offer a promotion) before linking it to the main site

Honestly forum traffic for me has been one of the hardest things to come by. I run a music site, so there are some posts, just not tons.

Hiring forum posters would be one way to go because no one wants to sign up for an empty forum. Also find places where your target market hands out and try to get your forum in front of them. For an example find some blogs in your niche and see if you can do some link exchanges. If you already have a website then there's nothing wrong if you link the empty forum with it. Send a newsletter to your clients telling that you now have a forum and invite them to start posting. Make a few interesting topics first.

Forums are very competitive and are very hard to get unique and new traffic to them, below are a couple ways to get more traffic and keep people coming back.

• Have each of your Hosting clients sign up for the forum and use the forum as a tech support place (this will help member count grow and start conversation)
• Paid Forum Posting - Have a paid posting company post several articles each day/week/ whatever you choose, and it will look like you have constant visitors.

Promote your forum to other related forums or blogs by posting comments. You can also do contests or newsletter to attract visitors.

JUST follow the above comments you will definelty get good results..

Offer some sort of freebies or services related to your site to attract visitors to join the forum.

Do work on it like offering services for freebies about your forum to attract daily visitors...
in forums you have to work hard unless it will not survive long days,...