How To Auto Populate A Forum?

14 replies
How Do I Auto Populate A Forum? No body wants to participate in a forum which is new and inactive. So how do I populate a forum? Is there some software that will grab posts from other forums and post it in my forum? I know it is black hat, but I see no other way to kick start my forum.
#auto #forum #populate
  • Profile picture of the author travlinguy
    Why not try providing the kind of community and content that will make people want to join? As for asking about black hat tricks on this forum, I'd be careful...
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  • Profile picture of the author Halcyon
    I don't advise any blackhat techniques like stealing postings. That kind of action will most definitely come back to bite you.

    However I agree that people only want to be where the action is and it's very hard to get a forum going if there's no action.

    Some forum owners hire paid posting services to get the ball rolling. This is not a good long term option because it gets pricey and there will be no real community spirit. Also if your goal is to monetize the site you'll need real members.

    But if your forum is up and ready, a paid service will create the illusion of activity while you work to bring in legitimate members.
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  • Profile picture of the author abhishekranjith
    Well I have a website which gets 5000 unique visits a day. I have a facebook page which grows with 100 new likes every week. So I wanted to transfer all this activity to an active community using a forum. I dont plan to monetize the forum with a paid membership. I wanted to populate it with post from other forums everything with the dates, images and comments because a few hundred posts will all it take for the already existing community to turn its eye towards my forum. If I hire forum writers, their content will get saturated after a point and it will all look the same. I think it will be a plane waste of money. I can ask them to manually copy and post rewritten content from other forums, but I have no idea how much that will cost. I am not sure if you can even hire people to do that.
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  • Profile picture of the author AceOfShirts
    Try running a contest where you pick one random forum posting to win something.

    That is what I am doing with the movie review site in my signature. I'm giving away movie tickets. You didn't say what your topic is so it's hard to recommend a prize.
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    • Profile picture of the author abhishekranjith
      Originally Posted by Ace Of Shirts View Post

      Try running a contest where you pick one random forum posting to win something.

      That is what I am doing with the movie review site in my signature. I'm giving away movie tickets. You didn't say what your topic is so it's hard to recommend a prize.
      WOW that is a great idea. Thanks. I never thought of it. Cheers.
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  • Profile picture of the author Joseph Robinson
    Banned
    Reproduction: when a Mommy member and a Daddy member love each other very much...

    But really, have conversations worth participating and people will come. It is a real time investment (something many don't seem to get), but if you stick with it and keep your playground clean things'll turn out just fine.
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  • Profile picture of the author lodgey
    To get the ball rolling, register yourself as a few different members and have a good conversation with yourself. If you are getting traffic all you need to do is get other people to join in/.
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  • Profile picture of the author MrMonetize
    This seems silly. Why not offer memberships to your friends, and a few of you start topics in each subforum to encourage conversation. If your site provides value, the forums will become populated. No-one wants to talk to fake conversations and bots.
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  • Profile picture of the author handymoney2
    I think that if you want this forum to succeed in the long term do it the correct way.
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  • Profile picture of the author jenmidas
    FORUM BOT???
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    • Promote your forum on social media sites. Invite your fans and followers to join. Offer some kind of incentive such as a free report or an ebook. Give away free stuff to the first users who post in a specific thread. Contact the people with whom you talk on a regular basis on Facebook or Twitter, and ask them politely to answer a question posted on your forum or simply express their opinion on a particular topic featured on your site.
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  • Profile picture of the author WillR
    My serious recommendation would be to employ some forum posters. I once had a forum a few years ago and was in the exact same situation. It's very hard to get those first few posts going because no one wants to hang out on an empty forum.

    I employed a service called forum boosters and over the span of a few weeks I had several hundred new and relevant posts added to the forum by a handful of new members.

    Was definitely worth the money I paid. You can get good and bad services though so make sure you do your research first. You want to make sure they are confident in English otherwise you will get some pretty horrible looking posts.
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  • Profile picture of the author Wendy Maki
    I'd call that living dangerously.

    The content you are talking about 'borrowing' is copyright-protected intellectual property and you can't just use it without permission of the copyright holder.

    The consequences of using other forum's materials goes way beyond just having your ISP shut down your forum, there are potential lawsuits...

    If you must kickstart a forum, why not create a couple of psuedonyms and just write a couple of posts yourself?...
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