Four Tips to Revive your Community (or get started)!
 

The following article was a great submission for people that are looking to bring a dead forum back from the grave, or even take the tips and use them to spark activity in a new forum to get it off the ground. I figured it would be useful in this section, too, so I'm going to share it, curtsey of AdminAddict.

Quote:
In this article we will go over four easy ways to revive your dormant community; this means, a community that was once active but has since died out and is collecting dust with no activity. These four tips are to realize, publish, promote, and update.

1. Realize your mistakes and the causes of failure.

Your community didn’t just die out for no reason. Something must have gone wrong, or a crucial aspect of forum management simply wasn’t being done. You must realize how you got yourself into this dormancy in the first place. What did you do wrong? Why did people stop visiting the forum?
Invite your community members to share their what they dislike about the community and be sure to address the concerns that are expressed.

2. Publish Content and Posts

Now that you have discovered and corrected the flaws of your community, it’s time to get content going. Content and discussions are the foundation of forums - it’s what forums and discussion boards are meant for.
You need to post several new threads/topics per day and several more posts per day. Create discussions that will spark member interactions - polls, debates, questionnaires - you name it.
Without fresh and new content, your users have nothing to look forward to and therefore no reason to stick around.

3. Promote your Community

Once you have some active discussions going on throughout your forum, it’s time to promote the community. There are several different ways to promote your community, but the most effective in the beginning will be word-of-mouth.
Signature links on other discussion forums do fairly well, too. If members enjoy your content on other websites, they will be inclined to check out whatever links you may have in your signature.

4. Upgrade your Forum and add new Features

Be sure your forum software is running the latest stable release so you can have the greatest feature-set to-date. Consider any hacks or plug-ins as well as any premium add-ons that you think will make great additions to the community. This is another time when consulting your community for feedback, suggestions and recommendations is a very good idea. Ask what they want to see and be able to do on the forum - and be sure to fulfill all reasonable requests.

These tips should get you well on your way to reviving your community and maximizing your potential activity levels.
Please feel free to share your own tips and methods for community revival. I think this is something we are sometimes unfortunately faced with dealing with, so it's better if we help each other out in this dreaded process than to just look beyond it.