What can be done to promote beta sites?

Question

One of the problems that affect the users of beta sites is that they don't get enough views for their questions. So they post off topic questions on reputed SE sites.

Usually, when I post a question in SO, I get at least 10-15 views within the first 5 minutes (The figures are not exact). But, when I posted the question on Project Management beta, there were only 2 views within the first 30 minutes

This is an impediment to the development of a significant user base for the beta sites.

Can we do something to attract more users to the beta sites, at least while they are on the beta stage?

For example - show the questions from the beta sites that the user has signed up for, in her SO account

Answer 1

A good answer to the title question

What can be done to promote beta sites?

is community promotion ads. These show up in the sidebar (the upper right-hand corner) on most graduated sites (except Stack Overflow). You must nominate an ad for a beta site on each graduated site you want it on, e.g. here. However, community ads are expected to be for sites related to the site they are being advertised on. You wouldn't add an ad for Aviation on Seasoned Advice, would you?

Another (less up-front) way is to place those ads on your profile, as some users do. I don't know what Stack Exchange thinks of such promotion, so I'll try to cast it in a neutral light, but some do it. I mention what sites I'm active on in my profile purely so people know a bit about me and my contributions to Stack Exchange, not as a plug. I also highly doubt that advertising via profiles does much good - or at least not as much as community ads.

Aside from that, you could go around mentioning the beta site in questions, answers, comments and chat. The downsides to this are

1. It's not encouraged frowned upon immoral.
2. People will think ill of you for it.
3. You'll get whacked with the spam-hammer.

Don't do this.

Answer 2

I have gone through a bunch of SE meta sites to see if they have any site promotion ideas that we hadn't though of yet at Language Learning. My answer is posted on Language Learning Meta, but I copy it here, with some minor modifications.

• A leaflet, see e.g. the leaflet for English Language & Usage.
• A leaflet like this may be used to promote the site at exhibitions (e.g. Expolangues in France, as mentioned on ELL, or Expolingua in Berlin), in public libraries, adult education centres (e.g. Volkshochschulen in Germany), etc. (This idea may not apply to all types of topics on Stack Exchange.)
• A subreddit, as proposed on Linguistics SE.
• A "Language learning flashmob week", like the stats flashmob week proposed on Cross Validated.
• "Polishing" the questions with the highest number of views (example from Language Learning SE), as proposed on French Language SE.
• A question asking competition or question challenge week, as proposed on Chinese Language SE (although there was no response when the idea was repeated two years later). The idea came from a StackOverflow blog post from 2012: Hot Topics: A Contest Formula that Works.
• Writing a great blogpost, as suggested on Chess SE. (This requires publication on a blog with a significant amount of traffic.)
• Creating our own blog, like Worldbuilding SE's blog on Medium. SE announced in December 2014 that it would no longer start community blogs for individual sites.
• Retweeting upvoted questions on Twitter, as suggested on Chess SE. That is ... if the beta site has a Twitter account. (See Why is it so difficult to find the twitter account for a Stack Exchange site?.) Literature SE, for example, has a community-maintained Twitter account.