How to build members from nothing

[Cardell Barbarin]

I have a network that is less than 2 months old. My community is www.allmyarts.net

It is an arts and performing arts based community. I attended last weeks webinar and it gave me a lot of insight on how to increase activity. I have already started to implement their suggestions. My problem is I dont know where to turn in terms of building initial members to grow from. How do I recruit members without becoming spam? 

[Jelena]

Sex sells? We are in ning platform.

[Jelena]

Another extrategy without sex banners?

[Anthony]

You taking it too literal.....I can safely say all the big media use this strategy in advertisement at one point...Case in point, the ads below are a good example..

[Kwaku OwusuAfriyie]

$8 per day? Looks like a big investment. How much will you get in return in terms of google Ads?

[Anthony]

You getting between .02, and 0.07 cents per visit...Its up to the quality of your network to convert those visitor into productive members who will then spread the news about your network.

[Kwaku OwusuAfriyie]

I made connection with professionals involved in the same sector on linkedin. Currently i have 2700plus connections on linkedin. I posted stuffs there and if they are interested they join. Once in a while I also send invitations to them. This strategy has worked so far than any other I tried.

I printed handouts and placed them on university campuses and some train stations...the result was poor.

I think identifying who your target group are will be a key.

I have 1700plus member. I started in feb 2012.

My main problem is how to promote more activity among the members.

[lorianne]

we went live in March 2012 and i now have 463 members. I had an advantage of getting about 100 of those members from a blogging site that i was a member of that was not meeting the needs of its members (lots of downtime and features that did not work).

I have gotten the additional members because the first wave of members are (i think) very active and they gave me tons of good content to share to places like Twitter and Facebook and other social sharing services. We average 46 new blog posts daily now as we are a very blog-centric community.

One thing I do that helps bring new visitors (a portion of whom become members) is to share share share. if you have good content share it... well, not all of it.

with just a few clicks of the share button on all blogs,  i can pick & choose the quality content  and share a 'teaser' or small portion of the blog to other places with a 'more' or 'continue' link that brings the reader to our network. i encourage my users to do the same and share their own content or content they find interesting.

good luck and i hope that helps.