Suggestions for increasing user activity

We have about 2300 members and almost 14,000 posts. Only about 100 users are active. Forum is www.justhalo.com. I bought the forum back in September when it had a little less than 13,000 posts. Ever since then, we had about 200+ new registrations, and not many of them have posted. I have done 1 contest, but mostly the active members participated. I have 2 contests planned for the near future. I am looking for some suggestions to get more users to post and become active.

 

I would send out an invitation to the forums to all members telling them about whats new, about the comps etc I would probably remove this:
Visitors found this page by searching for:

In some ways you are telling your users to go and search those terms again and could drive them elsewhere.

The stats at the bottom also cause the layout to break at 1024px x 768px, perhaps truncate the links on there a little until it fits.

Other than those, try and offer them something your competitors dont or cant

Good luck!

 

Send ALL members a weekly newsletter through vbulletin.

What we do on our forum is that we sent a weekly newsletter that talks about:

Quick welcome message and tell them a good news about the forum
Top 3 hottest discussions and asking what they think (with links to them)
Short article about related topic

Send your newsletter Monday Evening. We find it had the best response that day.

This does a couple of thing:

1. Reminds them you exist (stay top of mind as many users simply forgot about it)
2. Everybody reads email (especially about their topic of interests)
3. Links to popular posts listed in the FIRST part of email get them to link and visit the forum.

Finally, invite them to tell their friends and forward the email to their friend who might enjoy it.

Cheers,

Marc

 

I agree a weekly newsletter might be good. However sending one out every week might also become a little annoying to members. Maybe you can first start with a 2 weekly newsletter, and once activity picks up either stay with it or make it a monthly newsletter.

Next to that maybe try asking your member base. Ask them for feedback and new ideas what they want to see on the forum. Sometimes your member base can comeup with great ideas, and also point out where the forum/staff can do better.