How to get your first posts on new forum?

[shady]

I've added a forum to my site which will be a discussion of IT topics for my customers. No-one wants to post in an empty forum, what's the best way of getting people into it in the quet, early days?

 

[Shoseki]

Program them.

 

[fiveub]

The bigger your business grows, the more people join and chat. - Hard to just force people into an empty forum though.

 

[t31os]

You could also write a number of Sticky and FAQ posts that cover common questions, that way the forum has some content already.

Also avoids answering questions that are common and only take 5 minutes to answer while providing some content to your forum.

If they have read both the stickies and faqs and still have questions or feel something isnt covered in those posts then they might feel the need to register and post.

Just a suggestion...

 

[Tripnologist]

You can also create some posts yourself with a few dummy accounts just to get things going.

 

[Mint_Sauce]

How about running a competition where people have to post to enter. If it's a humerous competition, then people are more likely to post up stuff which may spark off some conversations and get things going plus it would be a good way to promote the forum.

Something like, write in 20 words why you think you should get a free hour of my services... or something...

 

[unwashed potato!]

if you really desperate then fake the threads and posts. set up fake accounts and if you know how, create a script which will nick posts from other forums and post them on yours.