Any ideas on increasing registrations?

[imahawki]

OK, a bit of backstory might help. My forum is home theater / AV focused and is about 10 years old. Over the years it has progressively gotten more and more... I guess cliquey... there is a small group of really active members but we never get any new blood. There are only about 700 registered members and only about 100 active members. What it IS, is good. Its very tight knit. Many of my forum members have met in real life and and text and call each other regularly outside of the forum. In fact, I set up my forum as a soft landing place for a forum that was closing down that had started in the late 90's. So many of these people have been online friends for nearly 20 years now.

The problem is, I just don't get any new registrations. I think I get maybe 5 a YEAR and half those are spam. The rest rarely post. I think there is good content on my site and (although this may be a double edged sword) it almost entirely lacks all of the drama and in-fighting that exits on similar topically themed forums.

I've started trying to create content across media types. I've made some YouTube videos and put links to the forum in the end cards. I setup a Facebook page and I post movie reviews there and repost some "StereoPorn" setups from some sites I follow. I even started some monthly give aways. Granted they're just a free Blu-Ray but its something. This is all more recent, like since late December so certainly I need to give it some time.

We average about 65 new threads a month and 1,000 posts a month. Some of that is off topic and I even have a "private" forum where you can only post once you hit 500 posts. This forum contains threads about marital and financial trouble, job woes, big life decisions. Stuff that people want to share with their online family but not have open to the public. Like I said, its a tight knit group. But we're very welcoming. I definitely don't think people would feel unwelcome.

Maybe its not the site itself (meaning content and people) maybe its a simple SEO problem. I don't know. I'm not trying to make money off the site, its already a money loser that I run for the love of it. I just feel like after 10 years its stale and I would love to attract some new members.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.