Today we’re going to talk about forum marketing. I hope you’re beginning to see a pattern here. Simple, basic traffic techniques. It’s not about the latest and greatest secret traffic weapons. It’s about choosing a few ways to get traffic and then doing them regularly and consistently. You don’t have to do every traffic method available ~ in fact, you’ll only dilute your results if you do that. Pick a few ~ 3 or 4 and then focus on those. You’ll find your traffic begins to increase and the more consistently you implement the techniques you’ve chosen the more success you’ll have driving more traffic.
- Image by Daniel F. Pigatto via Flickr
On to forum marketing.
What is forum marketing?
Forum marketing is a really simple way to do a few things.
1. Get your name out there
2. Build yourself as an expert in a topic
3. Drive traffic to your site
4. Build links to your site
Here’s how it’s going to work. Once you’ve chosen a forum (and I’ll outline that in a moment) you’re going to go in and talk to your market. You’re going to have conversations. You’re going to talk and help out and get involved. You’re going to become the person who is always willing to help out on that forum. You’re going to become the person that always has the answer to someone’s question (or can find a place to get the answer). You’re going to become the go to person for your market. 
Now, see why drive by forum marketing works about as well as drive by blog commenting?! Yeah ~ it doesn’t work at all.
So how do you get started?
Here’s the steps.
1. Choose a forum that is related and relevant to the niche of your site.
This is key. You want to make sure you are using a forum that is completely relevant to the topic of your site. It doesn’t need to be on the exact TOPIC of your site ~ but it does need to be a place where your market hangs out. Who’s your market? Who’s going to buy your products?
If you’re selling diapers you don’t want to be hanging out at a men’s only forum ~ not a good match.
However, if you’re selling diapers you could find a perfect match at any of the “new mom” or parenting forums ~ and let me tell you there are a million.
2. Choose a forum where you feel comfortable.
Forums, like people, are completely different. The feeling in one forum will be completely different than another, and since you’re going to be spending a bit of time in this forum you’d be wise to find one that feels good to you. It may take some interacting and lurking to figure out which forum is a good fit for you but let me tell you the time it takes is completely worth it.
You can find different forums related to your niche by going to Google and in the search box just putting in your niche + forum or your niche forum ~ you’ll get some options come up.
You may find you need to be creative ~ I doubt you’ll find any forums specifically about “ride on toys” but you may find forums about kid’s toys or you may find forums with parents talking to one another. Both of those would work well. In fact, I’d say the parenting forum would work better because there’s so much more to talk about ~ unless you just LOVE to talk about toys (and I know people who do lol).
3. Join the forum and fill in your profile area.
This is important ~ you are a real participant in this forum and you want to act like it. Get out of your head that this is forum marketing ~ because you are not going into this forum as a marketer ~ you’re going in as a participant.
Fill in your profile, your name, your hobbies, all the stuff they ask for. You can add a link to your site where it asks for your homepage. Fill in your signature ~ this is a line that will go below each post you make on the forum. Make sure to use something catchy that relates to your topic, but also make sure you use your keywords in the actual link back to your site.
Here’s my signature over at Lynn Terry’s Forum:
Beginner’s Internet Marketing Strategy. Making internet marketing simple enough for everyone to take action.
You can see that I’ve used a link to my site with the keywords, as well as a reason why people might want to follow the link. This is an important part of forum marketing ~ having a good signature.
A good signature does two things for you.
1. Creates anchor text backlinks to your site
2. Gets people interested enough to click to your site
4. Scope out the forum a little bit.
Learn who the players are. Learn how people interact on the forum. If you just go into a forum guns blazing you are likely to offend people and that’s the last thing you want to do. Take some time ~ I’m talking like 15 or 20 minutes ~ to look around. See who’s posting, who’s answering, what the rules are. It will make a huge difference.
5. Begin to participate.
Answer someone’s question. Don’t answer someone’s question with a link to your site. EVER. Just answer their question, whether it’s about the topic of your site or not ~ you are participating here! In most forums it takes time and credibility to be able to put links to your site in your answers ~ so don’t push it. Just be friendly, be helpful, and let your signature do your talking.
Once you’ve answered some questions you can start your own thread ~ if you have a question, or you have an issue, let the people in the forum help you out as well.
Once you’ve been active for a bit you can also ramp this up and write a short article about a topic people on the forum will appreciate. Then start a new thread and post the article. Make sure you have some kind of call to action at the bottom of your article ~ something to continue to the conversation. Ask a question ~ what do you think, what would you do… something like that. If you just end the article it’s likely you will just end the conversation and that is NOT the point! You want to create and foster discussion.
6. Schedule forum time into your daily routine.
If you’re going to implement forum marketing you’re going to have to do it consistently. I don’t mean you’ll have to spend hours and hours doing it, but making an appearance in the forum on a consistent basis will be one of the key elements to making this strategy work.
Set aside 30 minutes a day to go to the forums you’ve chosen and participate.
*** That does not mean go to the forum and read read read. It will not work if you do not WRITE!! ***
So how does this get me traffic?
As I mentioned earlier, each time you post to the forum your signature will show up below your post. This signature will have a link to your site in it. This link will help build backlinks to your site for the keyword you’re targeting in the link.
Each time you help someone out, or you provide quality information in the forum more people will want to know more about you. They will check out your profile. They will click the link to your site. They will also click the link in your signature. All of these things will help increase traffic to your site.
Forum marketing can be an excellent way to drive traffic to your site. Just follow the simple rules I’ve outlined in this post and you’ll do fine!
If you have questions about forum marketing feel free to ask in the comment section. If you’re not sure what kind of forum you’d look for in your niche I’d be glad to help you work that out.
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