Oh forums, they were the main discussion places on the web for years and I am sure this will not change for a while. They are great places to exchange experiences and disclose information. But how can we - online marketers - profit from the populartiy of forums? In this article I will show you!
Let's say: you have an awesome blog with lots of quality posts, you have done some basic SEO steps and you already have some Twitter followers who are not your mom or sister. This is nice and pretty so far, but your traffic is only 10-20 visitors/day.
Now a question goes across your head: What's next?
You can't have a profitable blog unless you have lots of visitors! So you start looking for some effective traffic building techniques. And now you discover forum marketing.
OK after this long prelude, it is time to start the substantive work.
Here are effective tips to dominate the forum you would like.
1.Post often and post quality stuff
Be an active member of your target forum's community. Firstly because nobody is going to trust an unknown person. Secondly your signature (with your link to your new blog in it) will appear only a couple of times (discussed in the second tip).Also in this step, there is a big warning! Never let quantity get over quality! If you write thousands of low quality replies you will still have a lower reputation than if you post 10 tip-top quality replies.
So post often and post quality stuff!
Now there is a very commonly asked question: What should I write about on forums?
Well, the answer is not so clear. It depends strongly on the forum's topic.
For example: If you are active on a forum related to golf then preferably build on exchanging your knowledge than sharing your friend's blog post that is stuffed with 10 tons of affiliate links.
This might be different on an Internet Marketing forum or a travel forum.
You decide what you find correct!
Now let's look at an example for the posting frequency and posting quality:
You're on an IM forum. Let's say you have relatively big knowledge in this field. In this case be a hyperactive forum citizen! Start 1-2 threads and post at least 4-5 replies a day.
Help people who know less than you with detailed tutorials and useful replies. And please please please don't determine yourself as a huge guru! This will make people hate you because your enormous ego. (Of course you must have a little ego as a marketer or a blogger.)
These things will highly contribute to your in-forum reputation.
Only if you earned decent respect on the forum, you can advance to the next step below.
2.Have an amazing signature
We made it to the most basic traffic generation method in forum marketing. Yay!I think almost everyone knows what forum signatures are: a few line introduction of yourself at the end of every post you make on the forum.
Big Internet Marketing masters call them “free ad spaces”. And you know what, they are right partly. Forum sigs are a very useful area to showcase your online work (link your website/blog/startup) or to link in your social profiles (Facebook,Twitter), so your forum friends can connect with you on other platforms as well.
OK, but how can you create an irresistible signature? Here is some help below:
Firstly do not do it like this:
"please check my newest site: xyz.com pls pls pls"Because it is spam and people don't like that very much (*captain obvious strike).
Instead write something like this:
“Hi, I am xyz - a full-time blogger with 4 years of experience in Internet marketing. Let's connect!With this you not only put evidence behind your work, also you don't spam people to death.
My blog: xyz.me
My Twitter: @xyz”
I think people are more likely to view a blog that is owned by a wise man with lots of experience in the field, than a spammy kid.
(Forum signatures are very similar to email signatures. Here is a great post by Tristan Higbee on them: http://thebacklight.com/traffic-generation-techniques/)
To continue... here is a dead simple list of things you can do to convert your forum thread viewers to blog visitors:
- Write the signature in the language of the forum
- Make it as long as the forum rules allow it
- Make it funny and interesting at the same time (people jump in for those things)
- If the forum rules allow pictures in the sig (sadly most of them don't), add some to it
- Don't make it all-CAPS-LOCK
- And for the end the most important thing: don't make it spammy as mentioned above
At the end write down your signatures in the comments! :)
3.If you are doing a giveaway or a competition spread the word on forums!
So the point of a giveaway or a $500 dollar guest post competition is to build up hype for your blog. You need loads of people to participate in these things to make it worth for you. You need to spread the word everywhere! On forums as well!
Usually there are loads of money seekers on forums (especially on marketing, blogging related ones), so you have almost surely can't miss the target with them.
4.Refer your blog as a source of information
Of course always watch out not to spam and always obey the forum rules related to linking in posts.
Example:
question (thread): "how does pagerank work?"
answer (reply): "Pagerank is an algorithm that Google uses to give the best results for your search terms. *some more text about PR*
For more info check: yourblog.com/2012/07/01/how-pr-works.html"
You can also use this method when starting a thread. You can start writing down a tutorial you published on your blog and after the second or third paragraph instead of continuing the article you leave a link to your original blog post.
(Oh yes, before I forget, to help you here is a list of the top webmaster/IM forums on the net: http://www.akosblog.com/2011/04/9-best-webmaster-forums-on-web.html)
Forum marketing has always been a very underrated technique for traffic generation. I personally love it and it brings a quite decent amount of visitors to my sites and blogs.
Hope you enjoyed this long (6000 character) article on forum marketing. I put all my energy into it! Thanks for reading! If you liked it please share! Thanks!
~ Akos Barta :)
Image credits:
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