Ok, I know there are a lot of frustrated forum owners here who are struggling to grow a community. In the past, I've tried anything and everything to make a forum grow, but frankly nothing has worked like the method about which I'm about to tell you. Here's how you can get many people to register on your forum in a small amount of time.

Depending on the topic of your forum, make news articles. If you are unable to find someone willing to do this, just use some other articles, but always give a link back to the author's site or state the source of the article.

Now you've got your articles, but no one knows they're there, so you need to get the word out. And there's one word that will solve your problem. Digg. Submit any and all of your latest news articles on Digg, and any other interesting threads from your forum that you think people might be interested in. You will be amazed at how much traffic you get just by submitting a few articles on one site.

My forum was officially opened to public about 6 days ago, and the first thing I did was hire a staff member who was responsible for writing articles, and news reports. Then, we submitted to as many sites as possible, but mainly Digg. In 6 days, we have received 67 members, and 1,300 posts, just by submitting a few articles on Digg. Keeping in mind, I have no past forum experience and this was basically my first shot at building a community.

If you are gaining members from Digg, most likely if they register, they WILL stay active on your forum, because if they weren't interested, they wouldn't have clicked your link in the first place.

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I hope that helped someone. Here's a few sites including Digg where you can submit your articles for free by just creating an accont.

Digg / News
Free Articles Directory | Submit Articles - ArticlesBase.com
ArticleCity.com - Free Articles for Reprint. Free Articles for your web site and newsletters. Submit Your Articles to Our Articles Directory.
Ezine Article Submission - Submit Your Best Quality Original Articles For Massive Exposure, Ezine Publishers Get 25 Free Article Reprints

Thanks for reading,
~Buz

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FootieChat

Thanks for this information.... hope it will be helpful