How to grow a community website/forum
I am trying to build a website that will contain articles regarding local procedures and a forum so anyone can ask questions and get answers. I have created 5 articles and around 30 fake users with 30 forum posts to have some content. What is the best way to market it? For the forum part, it is like a subreddit. How do I engage users?
You need to create relations offline with the participants first before going online. Ensure the members have something in common.
Interesting @nicolasiac - curious: what stops you acquire real users in the beginning?
I don't know how to engage users to ask their questions on the forum. I added the fake questions and answers just to show that there is activity.
As a community builder, engage people to participate / contribute to a certain thing a fundamental skill. It's very disappointing to see you going through this angle. I would suggest you start from the ground up. Join an active community and see how people facilitate conversation.
imagine visiting Reddit the first few days after going live and saw only 10 members were registered. would you bother asking a question or posting something?