Assuming the following:<p>- A small percentage of internet users potentially interested in your site will find it.<p>- A small percentage of those who come to your site will become regular users and create content.<p>- A small percentage of those who create content will account for most of the site's content.<p>I presume you want to find those people in the last category fast -- and you probably don't have the resources to let the funnel above just work.<p>So find them, cajole them, steal them, hire them, reward them, make the site engaging for them -- basically don't sweat the content side for a while until you have enough content to break a sweat over.<p>You really are creating two sites. One for consumers, the second for creators. The better the consumer site is at being a content site, the more traffic you get. The more features the creator site offers for user-rewarding social interaction, the more content you get.<p>Look at how Yelp rewards their frequent users in every detail, using techniques that are not unfamiliar to game designers. Check out Amy Jo Kim's explications of this topic:
<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/amyjokim/putting-the-fun-in-functiona" rel="nofollow">http://www.slideshare.net/amyjokim/putting-the-fun-in-functi...</a>
<a href="http://www.oreillynet.com/conferences/blog/2006/03/how_game_mechanics_can_make_yo.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.oreillynet.com/conferences/blog/2006/03/how_game_...</a><p>The best thing about getting highly active (you could say passionate) users is that they become champions for your site and bring it up in other contexts, not just blogs but in workplaces, among friends with similar interests and other potential champions.<p>But my most practical tip would be to mine existing interest groups via messageboards and labor to introduce their champions to your site. You see this on Yelp in how vegans and vegetarians are very active users. You can do the same thing for people who know about an entire vertical business segment of their area -- they've visited every ham radio store, every bookstore, every coffeehouse, every diabetic food store, whatever. People who already, mentally, have a list of feedback they want to ask. It's a bit more challenging than reviews, maybe, because people more often have lots of opinions to give than questions to ask. So you may have to find some way around that, say to organize campaigns for active users to create and join to ask en masse about some issue they care about.<p>I hope for the best with your launch -- congratulations.