First off, figure out what your forum is. In your case that may be hard as its "everything" lol. Once you figure it out, which can take awhile, its up to you to run some numbers, be creative, and find out the best way to market your site to the general people. Find unique ways to make your forum sound worthly of their member ship, and activity. If you cant appeal to people, you have no hope of members joining and being active.
The second thing to keep in mind is SEO, and linkbacks. SEO plays a major role these days, and linkbacks never hurt when used correctly (IE, not spam, unless you are aware of how to turn negative attention into positive attention, something im rather good at >_>) Linkbacks should be placed anywhere and everywhere. When commenting on blogs is what helps me most. I leave daily comments on a torrent news blog with close to 600,000 readers, and a high PR. Place your link in every signature you have, on blogs, link exchanges, ect.
From what ive learned, it usually takes a browser about 2 seconds to decide if your forum is worth actually "looking" at or not. The use of attention grabbing (yet easy on the eyes) colors and forum skin are a plus. Once you have the guest do a double take, they usually look around some, and may decide to join if they think your community is strong. Having an ugly, or bright skin can be very guest (and user) unfriendly.
A strong, active, community is hard to start at first, this is known. Because of this, you need to create a "mirror" image of one that is active, and pass it off as what your site actually is. This can be done many ways, but usually entalls the following;
-Welcome guests as soon as possible, shows your community is strong and friendly.
-dnt tipe liek dis, its not cool, and its not true 1337 either.
-Create "fake" accounts that you can use to reply with.
-Order packages from forums such as this, do post exchanges.
-Keep the forum clear of spam and junk posts.
-Be online as much as possible, even if just in another tab. This shows you care.
Dont be afraid to contact the owners of blogs and ask if they would like to do a write up on your site. It would help if the blog was related to your content, but overall you should be fine. I know alot of writers are constantly searching for a "Sundays" post, which is a slow news day. They very well might do a post about your site simply to save them an hour of surfing for weird news.
Know your rivals. Google up the sites that contain content like yours, and keep a close watch on what they do. Try to come up with ideas they havnt yet, be unique. Personally, I keep a close watch on my rival sites so that I dont "copy" them by mistake. If we both think up the idea of adding "a" and they release it a day before I do, it would be smart to allow "a" to be theirs, while you then improve "a" and release it as better and more thought out than their "a", if that makes any sense ๐
Thats all for tonight, im tired. Sorry if theres key errors, ive been having finger issues lately. Hope some of this helpped, and if you would like to do a banner exchange with my site (100+ members, 5000+ posts) just let me know kay? Good luck with your site -๐-
