Building Relationships and Community with Forums

We’ve been talking for the last couple months about getting traffic to your site. It’s more than that though, we’re talking about building a community, building a “tribe” if you will, of raving fans who love your site, love you and look forward to your new blog posts and want to come hang out with you on your site.

We’ve learned that creating this type of site rests heavily on creating relationships. Building backlinks is important ~ it helps with Google ranking so you get free traffic from Google, but building your community starts with building relationships.

Today we’re going to talk about an excellent way to go about building relationships and your readership.

Forums

I’m sure everyone is familiar with regular forums. There are forums on every given topic ~ I mean really. If you Google  your topic + forum I bet you will find something. If you can’t find a forum directly related to your niche I’m sure you can find a forum where your market hangs out.

ex. ride on toys.

You may not be able to find an entire forum based on ride on toys ~ however, I KNOW you can find forums about kids, about toddlers, about parenting ~ all places your target market would be.

Start with finding a forum.

A few things to check out before you join.

1. Is it an active forum? You can tell this by looking at the forum board, see if there are a lot of members (often noted at the bottom of the page ~ this many people online ~ most people online ever). Also note if there are a lot of topics. Check if those topics have replies.

If no one is hanging out in the forum you’re not going to find anyone to connect with.

Don’t take this to mean that you have to find the BIGGEST forum you possibly can. That’s not necessarily true. Finding an active forum ~ a community is much more important than the size. If you find a forum with 1000 really active members who are friendly and helpful ~ you’ll probably be better off than finding a forum with 1 million members, none of whom really know one another.

Sign up for membership

You will have to join the forum to be able to participate. There will be a join button somewhere. Click it, and fill in the form presented. Think about your username ~ this can be used to build the brand of you. You can use your real name, or if you’ve used a name across your other social networking outlets you might want to stick with the same name. People will begin to recognize you all around the web. Aka: momtohanna When I started social networking the name JackieLee was not available everywhere so I made the decision to be momtohanna ~ now I use that username wherever I go online now.

Once you’ve signed up you will most likely have to click a link in a confirmation email before you can participate, so watch for that email.

Add a picture.

This is another great way to brand yourself online. Add the SAME picture wherever you go. People will begin to recognize the picture and will automatically feel like they already know you. This is powerful. If you keep changing your picture people, even people who “know” you will feel like they don’t know you because they won’t recognize the picture.

This is very true ~ unless they’ve met you in person a new picture may not translate into being “you”. So pick an image you like and stick with it!

Add your profile

This is where you get to tell a little or a lot about yourself. Fill in as much as  you feel comfortable. The more you share the better people can get to know you. The more you share the more chances for common ground you’ll have with others.

Remember to put your website in your profile. There will usually be a space for it. It may say website or homepage or something similar. You will probably just need to use the url.

You may also find you can use some html in some of the writing areas. If you can ~ use html to create a keyword anchor text link back to your site. Just make sure it flows in the comments you’re supposed to be making in that area. It will probably look like an “about” section or something similar. So tell your story and when you get to the part about what you do, add a link to your site.

Add a signature

In a regular forum the signature is going to be your best way to get traffic to your site. A signature is a short statement you create. When you post to the forum by starting a thread or participating in a conversation your signature will show up under your comment. Here’s an example of my signature.

Yes, I see I used Jackie Lee there lol ~ I guess I’m doing both ~ not very consistent. I do use the same image everywhere though so that kind of ties it together.

While most places use html code you’ll find that most forums use BBCcode. It’s a little different and can be a little confusing so here’s the code you’ll need to create a keyword anchor text link in a signature.

[URL="http://yourlinkhere.com"]Your keywords here[/URL].

This will look like a regular clickable link when created in a signature, just like the one above.

Participate

Now that you’ve got your profile and your sig file set up it’s time to get involved. Before you start participating in a new forum however, I suggest you take some time to read around. Read some conversations. Look at who’s participating all the time. Look at how they are interacting. See who the “players” are in this forum.

After you’ve taken some time to get to know the “feel” of the place, go ahead and jump in the conversation. Answer a question, comment on a response. Participate.

Do NOT say ~ hey I answer that question on my blog, here’s the link.

NO NO NO.

That will not make you any friends in the forum, and could well get you kicked out. Don’t worry about your website. Your signature is dong the work for you now, you never have to mention your site. EVER.  Just meet people, answer questions, converse, get to know people, make friends. The more you naturally participate the more people will get to know you and like you and want to know more about you. They will click on your signature link, they will click on your profile link. They’ll check you out. If they like you and find you interesting they’ll follow you to your site.

Now if they like you and find you interesting depends on… you guessed it. How you interact in the forum.

This is a great way to meet people, it’s a great way to  build brand you AND it’s not going to be for everyone. I suggest you find a forum or two and test them out. Test them to see if you like hanging out in the forum, if you like the people, if you enjoy the time spent, and if it sends you traffic.

This, like any other “traffic tactic” takes consistent effort. You can’t just go to the forum one day for 30 minutes and then go back a month later.  People will not remember you. You’ll need to make it a regular part of your promotional time if you choose to use this technique.

You may find you don’t like forums ~ that’s ok. Good to know. Then don’t choose this method. If you do find you like hanging out in forums, meeting new people this is the perfect type of thing to do in the evening while you’re watching TV.  It’s something that doesn’t take your complete concentration, so have fun with it, and play with it while you’re doing something else that doesn’t take your complete attention (like watching TV).

I will also add, this is NOT the MOST effective use of your time, so don’t get SUCKED in and spend all your time in forums and not create new content on your blog. Content creation then promotion.

Also… if all you do is read the forum it doesn’t count at all. If all you do is read all you are doing is wasting time. This strategy is ONLY beneficial when you participate.

If you have any questions about finding or using forums feel free to ask in the comments section. On Friday we’re going to talk about Ning communities. While they are a little different than forums, they can be a powerful way to build brand you and your traffic… more about that on Friday.