Forum Marketing for Bloggers: How to Get Results from Posting on Forums

forum marketing

Are forums dying or are they quickly becoming a source of results that is no longer effective for internet marketers?

If you’ve studied the internet marketing space for the past 3 or more years you will notice that earlier on forum marketing is a tactic that is usually mentioned as one of the most effective ways to build traffic to a website, generate buzz and get backlinks. Just take a look at some of the recent top list posts on how to build traffic to a blog and you will hardly see forum marketing listed, in fact some bloggers are even condemning it. The question now is, is forum marketing no longer effective or could something be wrong with your approach.

I don’t have all the answers but I believe that with the experience I have from marketing a website in the weight loss niche I’ll be giving you a few insights that can help you get some quality results by using the same forum marketing some people now condemn.

What is Forum Marketing?

Forum marketing is the process of leveraging forums in your field to build an audience, to generate buzz and to gain backlinks. It’s that simple!

There is a strong probability you already use a forum but in case you’re not sure it is a community where you are able to interact with other members, see their threads, post your threads and reply to threads in a way that the whole community is able to see. In other words there is a whole new audience there waiting to be tapped, all they need is input from you.

Benefits of Forum Marketing

Forum marketing is often very overlooked and ignored when it comes to result-oriented marketing and I’ll be sharing a few major benefits of forum marketing below that I hope will help convince you to give it a try.

There are thousands of forums online for free and all of them can be accessed and leveraged without you having to “pitch” anybody or submit anything. Most forums will happily welcome you once they’re sure you’re not a spammer and you will be able to contribute as much valuable threads as possible in your own schedule. In fact, I’ll be providing resources to help you find top forums in your field below.

Your audience probably congregates mostly on forums. If you’re a marketer you probably already know about the Warrior Forums or the Digital Point Forums. Both forums are hugely popular and contain the ideal audience almost any marketer will need. The same goes for forums in other industries, including niche specific industries such as the weight loss industry.

You have unlimited access. In other words, you can make as many posts as you can and within as short a time-frame as you want. In other words, you can make hundred threads a day in comparison to guest blogging on another blog or submitting comments to other websites.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Guest blogging sure has disadvantages too and is mostly an ideal example of what I like to refer to as the good, the bad and the ugly. The good when it comes to forum marketing is that you write great posts following the forum rules, get published and start getting results in a matter of hours. The bad is that you write something and a (crazy?) moderator decides to delete your post and you get an infraction. The ugly is that you write a few posts and you’re banned completely.

The question now is how do you overcome the bad and the ugly?

The answer is very simple and not something you might expect; focus on contributing complete value to each forums you participate in. Let your main aim be to be seen as an expert, and in other words don’t do anything that might damage your credibility. Treat it like a mini-blog and try to be as helpful as you can be.

How to Find Top Forums that Deliver Results

Now that we’ve focused on basic things you should consider when forum marketing the next step is to find forums that deliver results. There are two basic approaches that I use and I’ll be sharing them below.

1. Use Google to Research Top Forums: Use Google to look for the top forums in your niche and then monitor interactions going on in these forums and the number of users they have to see if it will worth your while.

Some great keywords you can use are:

• Top forums on “your niche”
• “Your niche” forum
• “best forum” your niche

And other variations!

Of course, make sure you change “your niche” to your main niche, e.g., in my own case it will be “top forums on weight loss”.

2. Use Forum Directories to find top Forums: There are countless big forum directories online and they can be of great help if you let them. My personal favorite is the directory at Big-boards.com; it is a listing of thousands of forums in various industries and will help you discover some of the top forums in your niche while at the same time giving you stats as to why those forums are a must.

Forum Marketing Best Practices

Based on my experience with marketing my weight loss blog, below are a few best practices you should consider when trying to market your website on forums!

• Links Can Cause a Whole Lot of Problems: In other words, be wary of them. Don’t just create a thread on a forum and ask people to read the remaining part of that thread on your blog. In most cases the thread will be deleted, and your account will probably be banned from using that forum. A best practice is to use your URLs in your signature; that way your links will always appear whenever you make a new post.
• Be the Expert You Are: Just like with your blog. Don’t publish crap, think about your reputation and focus on getting a lot of the forum members to turn to readers and fans on the long run.
• Be Helpful: Reply to as many threads as possible, help and recommend as many people as possible and let people know you’re always available for them. That alone will pass across a message that you’re reliable and should be trusted and you will be able to win a lot of fans on the long run.

I hope the tips in this article help!

This is a guest post by John, an expert that helps you find the top TXR coupon code and flex belt coupon.