Getting many people to post in your forum is most definately the hardest thing to do. First, not all of your readers will post messages. In fact, only a small percentage will post regularly, and most will never post at all. Second, nobody want to be the first person to post a communication . In fact, topic starters (many people that initial new topic of discussion) will be a small percentage of your posters; the rest will simply reply to topics that have been started.

In order to get the forum to a point where it is self-sustaining, you will have to do a lot of work. Here are some tips that you may use to get your forum rolling:

If nobody will start a post, beginning it yourself
Register yourself as several members (you with multiple identities) and talk to yourself. (Note that this will not work in forum with logged IP). This will create enough "seed" posts to get everybody to read and perhaps add replies of their own.

Find topics that interest many people
If you get a mental block and cannot find anything interesting to talk to yourself about, then go to other web sites and see what all the people in those communities are talking about in their forums. You may also look at usenet newsgroups. Digest these ideas and regurgitate them using your various identities.

Advertise your forums relentlessly
Make sure your forum is accessible from every page of your website , particularly the index page. Make the link highly visible, or outright talk about it on the home page. Add a link to your internet page and forum as part of your e-mail, usenet and forum signature. Frequent other forums and mention your page and forum from instant to time (be careful to comply to their rules and not to spam).

Use your forums to support your website
You might ask your visitors "What do you think about this article?" (or tool, tutorial, etc.) and inquire of them to post their comments in the forums. Additionally, utilize it as part of your customer support program. For instance, I utilize our website forums to support our costless PHP scripts.

Use your forums to annouce new changes to your web page
This is a nice way to make announcement because many people may write their thoughts about the new feature (or article) youve just added.

Find allies
There are many webmasters that have the exact identical delimas as yours. Look for sites with empty or low traffic forums and electronic mail these webmasters. Offers to join their forums and post a few messages, then ask them if they might return you the same favor. If they want to know why you are bothering them, ask them to read this article.

Barter
Even if they do not have a forum, offer to write about their internet page or add a link to their page in exchange for some posts.

Recruit moderators
As your member population grows, find a few nice posters (the ones that post high-quality messages and replies) and ask them if they want to help you moderate the forum. Give them more rights than other users so that they might edit and/or delete other many people posts at their descretion. They will help you keep the forum in order, make sure all the rules are followed and help you answers questions. Many all the people are happy to take on this challenge.

Do e mail follow up with your members
Send e-mail to members that registered, but have not returned in a long measure . Tell them what has change since their last visit and why it could be worthwhile for them to return to your website . Try to do this about once every quarter, but do not do this more than once a month. Be sure to respect their rights by including appropriate unsubscribe data and take their title off the mailing list at their request.

Offer incentives
Some forums like this one offers incentives for forum members to make posts. For instance, I offer free of cost text-backlink advertisement in exchange for posts.

Hire a Professional
This would be my last option, but it can work for you. There are professional communication posters out there that will participate in your forums by starting threads and placing replies. This is a nice solution if you are really stuck and positive need someone else to help you get the forums going.

Some other things to keep in mind is that you should start your forums small with perhaps 3-4 categories, then slowly expand and create more categories. This way, the forums does not look so empty. Additionally, some forums software has polling features. Use these to your advantage. Controversial polls and topics can create flurries of activity.

As a final note, please tell me what you think about this article in our webmaster forums (did you get the idea