[Dave Bockett]

While I haven't any direct experience with trying to get forums going I have been thinking about it for a while and do plan to try and launch them on one of my websites in the future.

Definitely email as many people as you can so try and get the interest going.

As far as I can tell the key is to have as large a readership of your website/blog/newsletter as possible. Why has the flyingsolo forums been so successful? They have over 14,000 subscribers and you need a huge number of people as 99% will lurk and never post and it is a vicous circle as no one will post when there are no postings in the forum! You will need to do as much as you can to try and get a few people to help you really kick start the forums.

The other think is to determine what the need is in your industry. What is it people talk about? What are the big issues at the moment? You could feature a key posting in your email communication to try and get people engaged. No harm in being a bit controversial if you want - that always gets people going!

While I haven't really answered you question I hope this is useful?
Dave.