Best thing you did to make your forum grow?
 

What was the best tool/marketing angle/tip/trick/mod you used to make your board grow the most?

just curious

thanks!

Best thing i did is register with google webmasters and use their services and using a few seo tools on the forum.

Fertiliser.

Rapscallion

Write valuable content that people want to link to. Seemples.

Video blogging on youtube is maybe the best thing I ever did to promote my forum.

29 months later, my channel has 280+ videos, around 10,000 subscribers and youtube is my #2 source of targeted traffic with around an 18% - 23% bounce rate.

diversity ,,,,

well had a following already from a forum we all used to go on and it kinda took off :D

Networking Facebook :)

Jacquii.

spamming like forums.

Without a doubt, making it easier to post.

I still had enabled the anti-spambot "Click Quick Reply Button Above" thing.
So I removed that (so people can just write and click post).

The other thing, was smilies:
1st, changed the smilies from the right side, to the bottom.
2nd, changed the smilies displayed from the first 30 on the list, to 30 random ones.

That pretty much did it.
Of course, I have under 500 users.... so YMMV
:)