Patrick O'Keefe just did a full pre-mortem analysis of "Auto Forum Poster". Offering a quick summary, it's a tool that sucks in content from Yahoo! Answers and automatically pushes it into your forum using a set of fake username accounts. The idea behind the tool is to spin that content (as much of it as you can get) into discussion topics (aka) threads that you can suck in Google hits using. I'll leave it to Patrick to outline why that's a bad idea (1) legally, (2) ethically, (3) technically, and (4) practically. As usual, he drills down and makes a very thorough analysis.

However, it also spurred me to thinking about slightly less lazy ways to build content in niche forums. While great content is always going to be the key traffic driver for short term traffic swarms and/or sustained long term traffic, when it comes down to growing your long tail... starting out there are some strategies that can work I think.

It will take some work like everything else, but one lazy method is adding quick value to current news. Pick a niche or very localized point of interest, and stay on top of what's going on (Twitter, Google alerts, news search). Most of the time, you'll see those stories develop with minimal detail, built up on quotes and fluffy or generic filler content.

However, for every event (big or small in scale), there are many people involved directly with it... people who will (plus their friends and colleagues) be searching for references to themselves. Most news coverage will provide detail only on the key players, hit the broad strokes and move on. On top of that, some of the people reading the stories do want to know more about the people involved and they'll search for that info.

That's your opportunity to jump in and add some value.

Kinda Lazy Method #1:

Provide a recap of a niche or localized event, activity, or news blip. Compare a few different reports using Google News or Google Search for the past 24 hours. Get a list of the names of people involved and list them, along with a brief summary of their role (aka 1-2 lines) into your report. Now you have some potentially hit generating traffic. Sometimes it's possible to generate thousands of hits over a 2-3 days until the story gets a bit dated. Then it'll drop off until something else hits the traditional news media (paper, tv, etc) and sets people off searching again.

Tip: People will be looking for pictures of those anonymous names referenced in the news stories. The small players usually won't be shown. If you search out a picture of them and present it in a copyright safe way (i.e. thumb with link to source), you can get Google Image search traffic as well.

If you were to do that once or twice a day, over time you would build up the beginnings of a solid long tail flow of traffic, and you'd get some random bumps of 1000+ hit days along the way.

It does take a little bit of extra work, but it's not as hard or time consuming as creating 100% original, high quality content. And you are adding value, so it's not a basic repurposing of someone else's content. Keep in mind, there is nothing wrong with linking to your sources. If they provide really good information, then it's in your best interest to be known for providing good resources and making sure your viewers can "get more" when they want more... so do it! =)

Anyway, if you're kinda lazy but still want hits, try out that strategy and let me know how it works for you. =)

See:

Auto Forum Poster: “Siphon Millions of Users to Your Forum from Google Today!” (Get Ready to Cringe and Laugh) by Patrick O'Keefe