@RebeccaChernoff We'll get there. We're sort of a DIY crowd that likes having all the tools at hand; we'll pare down to what we need for the job later.
Then my verse I dishonor, my pictures despise, my person degrade and my temper chastise; and the pen is my terror, the pencil my shame; and my talents I bury, and dead is my fame.
I was thinking along those lines as well, we do have a solid core of sharp, experienced people. I guess we can worry about the question overrun when it's an actual problem.
Giveaways of hardware sound good (if expensive). Super User is running a competition right now (2nd Anniversary) with stuff as prizes. They also ran one last year. Checking out their criteria might be a good start. It will encourage existing users to use the site more and may encourage new posters too.
I could see sponsoring something, writing a guest article on how to use diy stackexchange, or maybe just pointing one of their editors to a few best-of questions. If we got the blog going we could send them how-to articles a bit more naturally - they seem to feature instructables pretty often.
As far as bounce rate, yes, it will send people away from the site. But the point is that if you're doing a complete kitchen reno, and posting about it, a blog is the place to do that. When you answer, you can say "I ran into that problem to, try doing blah blah. Here's a link to how I did this whole thing... "
@gregmac If there already "reference" answers then we should be using them in our answers. Summarise the information and post a link to the best page on the web.
It may be blasphemous to say, but one of the key groups to attract here are contractors, and they are doing this for money. Maybe we should make the site more attractive to those that are looking to get more business.
Kinda out there, but I'm thinking along the lines of how Careers relates to SO: Can we set up some sort of location based rep system that would encourage contractors to join the site? So contractors have incentive to give answers and provide expertise because it will drive work?
@AarthiDevanathanΨ Yes, any of those. I was thinking cards as a lot of stores in the UK have boards where local businesses can put up a stack of their cards for customers to take. As I said it would be hit and miss where they went up, but people could hit all the stores in their area.
@KarlKatzke It would have to be a link from your profile rather than on the page itself. Actually if you go to your profile page now and hit "edit" you'll see spaces to enter links to Facebook, LinkedIn etc. The developers are working on how this will be displayed right now.
