Originally Posted by Jerlene

1) Start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox

When you start these, you're providing a way for people to interact with each other and voice their opinions. As conversations build up, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your site religiously.

2) Start a blog

Put a blog on your site and update it regularly. Your visitors will become curious as to what your next post wil be about, if the previous one was good. Having an actual person be active on the site, from the admin's end, will prove to them that someone actually cares and is keeping the site up to date.

3) Carry out polls or surveys

Just like a shoutbox, chatroom or forum, polls and surveys allow your users to voice their opinion and become part of the community. Make sure that they're relevant to your site's theme though, so people actually get curious about the results.