I have been at it for about 3 years now.. I see other forums spring up and seemingly spawn a core community of posters all on it's own.. All I REALLY wish to accomplish on my website (a chicago bears fan site) is to just have a nice little core community of message board posters..

Can anyone here please lend me some tips on how to get exposure to my forum (without spamming other forums), and encourage people to stick around? Over the past 3 years I've had people trickling in post maybe once or twice and then eventually leave when they figure out that there's nobody else there.. The thing is though, If I could somehow get these people to stay a bit longer. Long enough so that they accumulate into a decent sized group in order to sustain themselves, I know it would snowball from there.. How can I achieve this?

All input would be greatly appreciated.

2 ways;

Be a great resource for info on your subject.

Be controversial.

Chris,

I'm facing the same problem. Do you think it's wise to just keep on filling the forum with articles or news that no one (except spammers) will respond to? I'm really interested in getting the forum running , but I don't know how to trigger it.

Maybe submitting some important news that's related to the forum will move the readers to reply/stay?

Please help.

techcrunch did something interesting. they started with a core blog that got popular and then created a forum.

Just filling a forum up with the same stuff as all the others in the field do becomes a drudge and is of little interest to anyone, including you.

You need to create something interesting or novel.
news the second time you find it is history.

Reporting your viewpoint of the news could be more interesting.

So what do you think of the situation in Darfur? Did you know the UN sent a letter pleading with China to get involved with the situation? Don't you think it's pretty bad when the world is asking for the Chinese government's help dealing with human rights abuses?

Getting back to the topic at hand, don't you think that's a little more interesting than just repeating headlines?

Create something interesting and different that provides value
to your surfers (either through content, gifts or perhaps even a
competition. Or all 3.)

Then, either pay people to get started, get some scraping soft-
ware to auto-fill your forum, or set up multiple accounts yourself
and go posting crazy.

You identified your problem in your post - nobody wants to join
and empty forum, so fill it up! There is no secret, just hard work
and making sure you've produced a site that is useful to people