How Forum Marketing Works
You can use discussion forums to market your website or blog. Search on google for forums related to the subject area that your website or blog belongs to.
Join the forums that have the largest memberships and discussion activity. Follow the steps in joining the forum, you may have to verify your sign-up request by clicking on a link sent to your email address.
Once you are a member of your chosen forum, update your profile details. Provide as much detail as possible. Use this to let other forum members know what you are able to provide them, the topics you specialise in, and your experience.
Upload a picture to your profile, this is really important as it will make other forum members look at you as a real person. Your own picture will also make you stand out from members that don’t provide a picture or just use a random image.
The most important part of your user profile in forums for marketing purposes is your signature. In your signature you can provide a link to your website or blog. You signature is going to be responsible for driving the visitors to your site. Don’t use a sales pitch in your signature, make it look like a resource for more information.
Once your signature is in place, go to the main forum. There is usually a section for new member introductions. Post a message in this section to introduce yourself and what you are involved in.
Don’t start by posting articles that are aimed at marketing your website or blog. You should start off with answering questions posted by other members. Provide them with your knowledge and help.
Once the forum users start to find your posts useful, they will start to trust you and also start to learn more about you from your profile and the link in your signature. As your reputation and activity on the forum increases, you should start to see more members following the link in your signature.
If you don’t know a great deal about the subject on the forum, I would suggest that you start learning about the subject for other members before you start offering advice and tips. You should only offer tips and advice on subjects that you are proficient in.
Once you have a large number of posts on the forum, you will start gaining more respect form other forum members and the links in your signature will start driving more traffic to your site. The links in your signature can also help to boost the search engine ranking of your website or blog.
