Filling In Zeros & Supplying Fresh Topics

I was apart of the board where the admin encouraged members to post and said she wanted to see members engaged in discussion more, but the admin herself rarely posted there. She expects it all to just come together as though not to put enough effort into it.

Original ideas help. On Furuba Role-play boards, a lot of them don't succeed because everyone uses the same ideas, mostly from this one board in particular. It gets old and after a while you don't want to join them, and you want to quite.

Giving updates on your site help where you're providing something new frequently. Role-plays are a great way if you have really good writers that write well thought-out stories. Usually, those kind of role-plays are updated frequently.

I've seen staff members contact members through PM's and even messenger to keep a relationship going. It makes it seem more personal as though the admin just doesn't want a higher member count, but actually looking to make relationships.

Long posts help. You don't want to write posts that are too long. You want to make posts that are too the point, but if you write posts that are well thought-out and looked like you took there time, it interests people. As they say, quality not quanity. Or is it quanity not quality? *shakes head* You understand what I mean, though.

Asking questions that aren't normally asked help, too. For example, if you ask "how old are you" and this user isn't new to forums, they've most likely have already seen that question on another forum and won't be interesting in joining. Supply fresh topics - topics that aren't normally asked on message boards.

I was a member of this one particular message board once. I posted questions that were rarely asked. Often, new members would repeat questions like "how old are you?" It's not that I wanted my post to stand out, I wanted to bring up "new" and "fresh" discussion. I had so many compliments on my topics. They often told me, "great topic!" If you hear that on your board, then it can become a success.

Not often do you see a sense of humor on boards. Many of the topics seem pretty serious nowadays. It would help if you brought a little light or sense of humor where you made someone laugh in a post too. Everyone loves a sense of humor!

I have three books with some simple one sentence if question.

I add at least two questions per day questions to my general board.

What I do is post the question just the question one day and then I provide my response the next week.

This way I bump the thread back up for newer visiters.

Polls are easy to do, they trick lurkers into responding.

I start a new poll each week and some usually casts their vote and then they want to expound on the choice.

Polls don't have to be thought provoking just something to get them to do an action other than just read.

One of my more popular polls was one about Fruit Punch

The question I posed was simply:

What Is The Best Type Of Fruit Juice?

The poll options were:

Orange
Apple
Grape
Other, I'll Explain

This left out some other obvious choices but the variety of choices left unsaid helped get some of my lurkers posting.

And if the post once they will post again.

Another thing I do is that I require my MODs to post one on topic thread per week.

For a while, it was me and the co-admin on the board...and no one else. So, I went and made threads for every board, sometimes numerous ones. I would make comments about the characters and such and pose questions...then, I would go back every day or so and expand on my thoughts. Before long, people were joining and posting and they had SOMETHING to come to see...and then they started to do it on their own.

There is no set amount of time, it's different for each forum. You may want to read the 'How To Advertise Your ProBoard' thread here in this board for tips on getting your link out there so you can get visitors.

I'm working on this currently because my forum is new. It's quite a struggle because the forum goes along with my website, which is dedicated to Electronic Voice Phenomenon (the downloads are on the blog site), so I'm having to come up with DIFFERENT topics for the forum.

It's work, but it's fun too. I can't wait to see the results!

^ I can completely sympathise with you & know exactly what you mean by ending posts with questions, hoping to get answers.
I'm far from a lazy admin (I know it wasn't directed to me as such) but what I mean is to supply fresh topics daily which gives MORE than enough for people to reply to but they just don't.
Like you Kmylove I'm in very much the same predicament right now, which is a pity since we were once active.
Right now it's only me supplying the topics & staffing my place