Member Activity: How have you gotten (and kept) yours up?

[bai]

I have a few members on my site, which I am more than comfortable with. Clair Plane is a new board and I don't intend for it to be some huge, smash success story forum with millions of posts within two years. What I am not comfortable with is the fact that I did entice some people to join, but only one member (who I am extremely grateful for, don't get me wrong) has been posting back to back. Considering my situation....I am a bit clueless. Especially because I "know" some of these people from another website. 

In your experience what was the best way to up member activity? Especially for niche forums?

[Kami]

I mean. The answer to this is the same for any forum: have engaging content, and use good advertising methods.

There is no magic formula or piece of advice thats going to click and make things active, especially not for a niche forum.

Here is a better question: what have you done to a) promote your forum and b) engage users while theyre there? I suspect youve done some ad posts and affiliates, and put up some info threads and other member participation content yeah?

If so, you need to step up your game. Use social media to your advantage. Ask your friends to help out via word of mouth. Make sure your content is varied and is more than just "what do you guys think about x topic?" as that gets boring quickly.

And be realistic. It takes sites months, if not years, to get off the ground. Your forum was established last month. It is not the time to be concerned about flagging activity.