The Power of Forum Marketing

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As part of my daily and weekly tasks, I spend a fair amount of time on various online forums which are related to the niches in which I operate. Niche forums should not be underestimated when it comes to considering them for traffic generation. During my time on the forums, I am usually conducting research, keeping up to date with my niches, and building relationships with other members of my niche to strengthen my credibility and positioning within it.

As well as these activities, I spend a considerable amount of time posting my own content as well as responding to others on the forums. I have no doubt that these strategies probably add between $1,000 and $3,000 to my income every month, possibly more. However it’s important to go about forum marketing in the right way. There are some definate no-no’s when forum marketing which actually have negative effect on your promotions. Here are a few tips from my own experience which should help you when forum marketing:

Do Your Homework: Before you join any forum, you must do some research.

1. Ensure you choose forums which are relevant to the niche of the product or service you are promoting. If you are promoting a product about Search Engine Marketing don’t go joining a health forum as this will be no use. Use Big Boards to find forums related to your niche.

2. Choose popular forums. There is no point in wasting your time and energy on forums that few members and few posts. When you find any forum, check the number of active members (usually at the bottom of the page) to get an idea of how active the forum is.

3. Choose forums that allow sig tags. If it’s possible read the rules before joining and pay attention to them. Your time is important, too. It is better to find out that a forum doesn’t allow posts with sig tags before you go to the time and trouble of joining.

Ok so you’ve found some forums…joined up…what’s next?

1. Keep your sig tag short and update it regularly. The ideal thing is to limit yourself to one link, preferably to your main website. If you don’t know what a sig tag is, it’s basically a short message which you can set in your profile on the forum which will appear under every post you make. Try and use enticing copy in your signature text which will encourage people to click your link.

2. Never create posts that are nothing more than an advertisement. This all but a universal rule and only displays the marketers lack of experience if he does so. At best this kind of post will be deleted by the monitors….at worst, it is grounds for being banned.

3. Become an active member and contributor on the forum. Plan to spend at least an hour each day there and take the time to get to know the users. Take the time to introduce yourself with intelligent questions depending upon the forum’s topic.

As you spend more time on the forum you will build up more of a profile and hopefully develop a good reputation with other members. As this happens you will find more people begin to follow your links and your traffic from the forums will gradually increase.

One final tactic I use when marketing to forums - when you have a new product or service you want to promote, first modify your sig file with the new link to the promotion. Next, use the forum search function to find any posts related to this particular topic. You can then make an informative post responding to the topic (especially if your new product/service is helpful to this topic). This should drive an initial stream of traffic to your new promotion.

Remember, as with all traffic generation methods, it’s important to try and track and test their effectiveness where possible. The best way to do this is to setup a specific tracking id (if affiliate marketing) or specific sales page if you are promotion your own product, for each traffic source. By doing this, you can record your time invested in each method, and the return on investment. Over time you can then spend more time on the more effective strategies, maximising your use of time. This is also extremely helpful when considering outsourcing strategies, as you already have some idea of the effectiveness of each strategy and what to expect from your outsourcing efforts.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 1:12 am and is filed under James's Marketing Lessons, James's Biz Strategies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.