There has to be a reason for people to go to the community: - HN: discussions and news - Reddit: niche topics and conversations - StackOverflow: ask question

There has to be a reason for people to go to the community: - HN: discussions and news - Reddit: niche topics and conversations - StackOverflow: ask questions and find answers All these reasons are different for the target demographics. Hopefully you can get people to come to the site to read, then participate and generate more content for others to discover and read ad-nauseum. Sites which make it fun/useful for people either consuming or generating content, are the ones with thriving and growing communities....