This is a guest post by Jade who writes at Innovativepassiveincome. If you like to write for Shoutmeloud do read : Shoutmeloud revenue sharing program.
We have already covered few topics on promoting a blog via forum. Few of them is how to promote your blog via forum, list of dofollow forums and 5 ways to drive traffic to your blog. Forums are a somewhat labor intensive but highly effective way to increase traffic and bring engaged visitors to your website or blog. While search traffic is more likely to click ads, forum traffic will leave you comments and buy your products. However if you go about using forums wrong, you will do more harm than good to your site.
Shopping for a Forum
Not all forums are created equal. Some are small highly targeted affairs while others are large forums with very broad topics. Some forums are pro-business and welcome a little self promotion (Warrior Forums is a good example) while other forums are communistic affairs that boot anyone who even breaths about their business online.
You will be making a serious commitment to any forum you plan to use for promotion, so shop like you would for a long term girlfriend/boyfriend. Each forum develops a personality of its own so you and the forum better match up in style, interests, and approach to life. If there is not a good match you will be frustrated and the promotion will fail.
Search “niche +forum” to identify possible candidates to join.
Use Your Profile
Choose an appropriate non-offensive but memorable user name and fill out your profile with some reasonable detail. Do not include AIM and Yahoo profile links – only spammers do that. Do include a link to your main website if there is a spot for it. Look around at how much detail some of the forum thought leaders put in for a guide.
Use Your Signature
If the forum allows signatures definitely put an anchored link into your signature. Be sure you understand the forum policies on signatures first though so you do not make enemies with the management. If in doubt, ask first by private message.
Start and Respond to Topics
Regularly visit the forum, starting good topics and making intelligent comments. Where it fits well into the conversation drop in the occasional anchored link to your blog, but make sure you are not offensive or off topic.
Don’t always link to your stuff, link to other interesting resources too. Score big points by posting appropriate links to the blogs of the forum thought leaders and up and coming members. Others might even reciprocate (but NEVER ask them too).
If you blog, occasionally you can write a killer post with a little controversy. Post a summary and link to the forum as a new thread, asking others what they think. Say something like “If I got this wrong please let me know“. Participate in the resulting discussion, but not too much since your comments can end the discussion if everyone thinks you have your answer now. This technique can be very effective to bring in traffic to your blog posts.
Be Engaging to Engage Others
Forget using a forum to promote yourself unless you are prepared to come to the forum regularly and contribute. As a regular poster you will develop trust and make friends who will engage with you in your business, blog or websites. As a rare poster you will be considered a lousy drive-by spammer worthy only of being banned.
Do let us know if you promote your blog/services via forum? Which kind of forum do you target and share your success story.
Related posts:
- How To Use Forums To Promote Your Website
- I’m a forum Spammer : Delete my Account Immediately
- BuddyPress Forum for WordPress : Review
- 3 Ways to Promote your Blogging Business Offline
- 5 Secrets Revealed for Creating Viral Content
- Orkut help forum is up and Orkut Google group is history
- 5 Ways To Get More BackLinks in Less Time
- The list of dofollow forums for bloggers to increase backlinks
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice article Jade and using your name in Forums with correct measures is very important and at the same time make sure that we follow forums rules and regulations, thanks for sharing this post.
Yep too much of crappy posts can put one into trouble in some heavily moderated forums !
I actually help run a forum so some of these tips are written from the perspective of a forum admin. Our forum is very pro business but many are not. Each forum has a personality of its own.
Good post, I rarely use forums compared to other social networking services like Twitter/Facebook for example.
But, I always ensure that my signature contains a link and that any posts or replies I do, are of quality content or at least relevant.
Good post guys.
I mostly use forums because of the signature.
Quite a nice post, I do use forums a lot and all I can say is that it does surely act as quite a traffic booster and the do follow signature links can help in your backlink building too.
for me, the traffic from forums comes mainly through my signature which i have made quiet attractive
You are right that forum posting is labor intensive but if we bring along an attitude of contributing and learning from others, it makes the task much easier.
Nice post thanks. I do all of those in forum. I believe if i give value to other in forum they will give value to me too.
I have the most success by using my signature. What I do is I add my latest two blog posts to my signature, it works for me
Excellent! Thanks for making this list concise and in one list. So many folks still do not know how to handle forum etiquette. This will surely help. As time goes on it will become even more critical to be “socially correct.” Will pass your feature on. Best to you.