1. Its not hard, you just need to try and keep it going. I wonder how i get so many people too, i just throw out recruitments ALOT and the ones that are good members stay, the others quit or leave.
2Announcements should depend on the guild, if u want to run instances tell what to run and the requirements of it. If you need resources for guild telling them that(offering to pay doesn' hurt).
3To get you guildies gathering can be tough, you best bet is do it yourself i know you think that to be a guildy they should just hel you, but not everyone is committed to a guild especially (or so it sounds) like your just getting on your feet. as far as your members know you could quit tommorow and everything they gave was worth nothing.
4 Contests? well it depends on what you have, if your poor, pet eggs are great starters as giveaways, if your not gold. I start with give always because if you have terrible rewards no ones gonna play. Some ideas are
A Hide somewhere make them find you
B Raise guild mats: you know itd be fun if there was a reward
C Leveling contest.
D let them give u ideas
5 Depends on the levels and how well they are on gear. If there high lvl low gear tell em how they get some. if they're low level i would say leveling is most important
6 Academy is first you need it for everything else lol then library and the Processing factory is a must for SW. The gathering station can be nice but only required for certain things (i think anyways) towers can be nice, but most higher ranked guild delete them and use a second processing factory, until they get better walls anyway(if they do)
7 to check activity click "Show offline members" and then click in the top tight corner the drag down bar. Then click Connection status, this should show the amount of time theyve been offline (it might take a few seconds to load times)
8 messages you think guild will use like addons and vent or instance gear. etc
Hope this helped