How to auto populate forums

[jonathan s]

The problem with forums, or question and answer websites, is no one will use one with no information already on it.
At one time there was a premium plugin that would populate comments fromm Yahoo answers to encourage commenting.
Id there any way or any plugin to autopoulate 1. a set of users, 2 a forum with questions/comments.
I have seen other startups do this, so there must be a way. It may be it must all be done manually, which will be long and arduous but if there is another way it would help.

[JNashHawkins]

It takes time but you can post little tidbits of news and links to relevant sites and articles. Once it takes off it will often snowball up to a point anyway.

Don’t stray too far afield from your core subject or you’ll wind up with a forum that tends to go off topic too far. Of course, you can take those off-topic posts and spawn a new forum from that material. It’s all good in the long run.

You’ll have a few users who post for a while and bring in more traffic with their content then they’ll move on. Often the others who followed them there will stay.

Just make sure your own post content fits the site well and see what happens. Always mention your forum anytime you can without overdoing things. Business cards often open the door to further conversation.