Tips on increasing traffic to my forum

[pokerie]

I'm not sure if this is the most suitable place for this thread so apologies if it isnt, and would be appreciative if a mod can move it if needs be.

I'd like to see if anyone has some tips on how I could increase traffic to my forum.

A quick account of my site;

Online poker room-site that has grown from a community based site. We have 600+ registered forum members, but forum activity is relatively low. (maybe averaging 5-10 new posts a day).

Recently launched a redesign of the site which has gained positive feedback from active members.

We dont have the budget for external banner promotions and so on. So I'm looking for ways to use the traffic that we do get to our best advantage.

a. increase traffic towards the site
and
b. encourage people to sign up and become active posters

A few ideas that we have tried or are considering;

Pay active members to do reports on live poker games they have played and post them up on site
Do post-related competitions, such as "register and make 5 posts for a chance to win $xxx".

Again, we do have a good amount of registered users, its just only a small amount of them are active.

Thanks for your time
Cian

[oninuva]

First off all you should start posting alot yourself. So its more than 5-10 posts a day. Next you should amke a user group called "Supoprters" or Senior Members. Then make an event that will be

"the first member to reach X amount of posts will get a free [insert user group here] membership"

just my two cents :)

[pokerie]

Thanks for the reply oninuva;)

I already post a lot in the forum, I have around 1300 posts. There are a few guys who post a lot also, but I just want to find ways of encouraging more activity from a wider group, because I believe that it is quite close to reaching a point where it would be self-generating - ie, word of mouth etc. It just needs that extra shove to get it to that point. So, I will definately be looking into methods such as you have suggested.

[oninuva]

your welcome :)

Glad to help out