This effective, albeit unscrupulous, strategy has been used by many webmasters to get their forum off the ground. The idea is to create fake users and post to them every day while actively promoting your forum. When other visitors see that there is an active conversation, they will be interested and want to participate in the activity.
Keep the forum up to date
Nothing turns off visitors more than an empty forum. The first thing they will check is how many posts there are on the forum. Then they will check when is the last post. If you want to encourage new members to sign up and participate, do your best to keep the forum up to date by posting at least one new message every day. Even if the post is from the owner of the Forum, it is encouraging for new visitors to know that someone is living there and that the place has not been abandoned.
Call your friends
Let all your friends know that you have just started the forum. Most of the time, this is a short-lived solution, as your friends will sign up quickly, and eventually, their enthusiasm for your forum website will good benefit. Depending on how excited your friends are about the forum and how long they have on their hands, they can help add hundreds of new posts.
Start a scandalous debate
The idea behind this technique is that if you create a very biased post, you are asking the visitor to register an account to voice their opposition and get into a heated debate. The post should be very stubborn and a bit annoying for those who have a different point of view on the subject.
Example: If President Bush really cared about the economy, then why would he? (Enter something annoying here);
People who support Bush will sign up in the blink of an eye to posting their opposition to the statement, while people who do not support Bush will sign up to support the statement. An annoying post can spawn a 10-page thread of people debating. This will increase the number of members and publications in a matter of days.
Authored by: Soapbox Ninja