Web forum marketing: Forums are the best free way to promote a website |
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When it comes to starting a successful website, you must divide your efforts into two main areas:Developing content and ways to drive traffic to that content. In order to be successful, you need to invest extensively(time and money) into each area. You may have the best looking website with the most awesome content in the world, but without traffic to your website you have wasted your time. After all, what good is a great website if there is no one to use it?
In this series of posts I will concentrate on what I think are the best ways to develop a decent source of traffic without investing a lot of money into it.
I realize that when people start a new website, they usually don’t have or want to invest real money in order to promote it. If this sounds like you, don’t worry because I have some good news for you. In my opinion, the best methods for driving traffic to your website are also the free ones.
Part 1: Promoting your website on web forums
Forum marketing is my favorite way to promote a website for two reasons:
- Traffic from a specific forum is usually worth more than other methods. People who visit web forums tend to crave knowledge. For this reason, it is common that a reader from a forum will continue to come back to your website IF you have good content they consider valuable.
- You actually learn a lot about your industry by reading the threads and posts in the community forum. I usually get my posting ideas based off questions people ask in these forums.
OK – Onto the good stuff: Methods to drive traffic from the forums to your website.
The first thing you must do is find the best forums for you to join. The easiest way to do this is simply go to Google and type in ‘[your subject] forums’. I will use web hosting as an example to keep this easy. If I were looking for some good forums, I would type in ‘web hosting forums’ on Google. You will want to target mainly the first 10 forums on the list, but signing up for as many as you can won’t hurt either.
Driving traffic with your forum signature
Your signature at a forum you join will be your main way to get the word out about your website.
- Everytime you do something on a forum – start a thread, reply, or comment your signature will be left behind after the post or comment. This is like free advertising
- I believe that your signature actually draws more attention than the paid advertisements on the page you are posting on. Most people become blind to ads being served in certain areas on a website. Your signature is placed just after your post, so a viewer is forced to view it as they scroll down the page.
Now that you know about signatures, you will want to start becoming active in the community. Try to post and reply often so that you can leave your signature behind as much as possible. You draw the most traffic to your website(through you signature) by adding something valuable to a certain topic or thread. This is because a reader will be more interested in the website owned by the knowledgeable poster as apposed to a website owned by a spammer leaving a two word reply to the thread.
*IMPORTANT* Always write valuable replies or else you are wasting your time. If you can’t write more than 3 sentences to a certain topic, don’t even bother replying.
Additonal signature tips:
- Upload an avatar to your forum profile. This will make it easier for members to recognize the poster. I have noticed that pictures of beautiful women draw the most attention.
- Make your signature look good by using different font weights, font colors, indentation, etc. Take a look at other member signatures and take notice at which ones draw your attention the best. A well designed signature is the key to bringing traffic to the websites in your signature
Leaving in content links on a forum
First off: You must be careful with this. Use it only sparingly or else you will get penalized by the forum moderators. Basically whenever you read a thread that requests certain information that you have written about, reply to the thread with two or three sentences including ‘You should check out this blog post[insert link to blog], it may help you understand a little better’. Make sure that the link you are sending them to actually relates to the thread topic. I have found that links within the thread itself get more attention than links in a signature. As I said, do not over abuse this and be creative.
Using the forum marketplace
Most forums have a market place for members to post offers and requests for a certain service or product. This is a great way to generate sales and traffic to your website. This is also a great way for you to start getting your website name and brand out there. You will be surprised how many people actually visit the marketplace area of forums. Its free, so its always worth a shot.
While being active on forums is time consuming, it is a great way for you to start developing a source of traffic and a loyal reader base without having to invest any money. It is important to appear knowledgeable and to leave valuable information in every thread you are active in. If you follow the above tips and practice often, I assure you that you will get plenty of traffic to your website.
Have some experience with forum marketing?
Feel free to share your forum marketing trials and tribulations with our readers by commenting. Your contributions are always appreciated, and you even get a free backlink out of it!
Sep 22nd, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Can you tell me a best forum to join about money making and problogging?
Blog appreciated,
Jun Rhy
http://www.webpreneurjournal.com
Sep 23rd, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Hello,
Here are a few forums that I have heard are good for traffic and also have some good topics on how to capitalize off your sites.
http://www.code4gold.com/forums/
http://www.sitepoint.com
forums.digitalpoint.com <– very active and has good info on monetizing your site and how to promote it. Also a good source of traffic to your site.
Regards,
Dan
Oct 8th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Forums is a good place to be when you want to interact at the same time learn. Interact with the members as well as the moderators will gain you enough exposure, making other members look at your profile, and where you came from, and your site that will always be your reference site.
Being an active member in a forum is the best way to do this, post some valuable threads, meaningful ones, that will make members and moderators comment on it. Then answer post of other members whole heartedly and build rapport. In this way, you gain friends, at the same time, traffic.
This article says a lot on how to use forums to attract traffic, these tips to do so are very factual and it really works.
Oct 12th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Dan, I appreciate these pointers…basically knew about the forum take, and the idea of leaving valuable comments, but your specific suggestion of at least 3+ sentences is one I will keep in mind from now on…and the signature suggestion is a new idea to me, also.
I find the whole networking business to be extremely time-consuming,too, and I don’t have that kind of time actually, but I find that if I don’t do it at least off and on, I get almost no traffic. For me, the issue of relationship w/people I’m getting to “know” trumps traffic generation, though. So while I still get little traffic, some of the connections I’ve made are paying off in aces!
Thanks for this article,
Christina
http://godhistoryandyou.blogspot.com/
Oct 16th, 2008 at 7:32 am
Dan you have good subject selected. You are absolutely right that Forums are the best and free way to promote a website. also you have good written for signature link. Because Signature link also is very important.there are so many forums which are given signature link. It can help to increase traffic of website.
Great post. Keep it up.
Oct 26th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Thanks a lot for your information. This is very interesting since I am also finding ways to create traffic into my website. Thanks again for the information provided.
keep it up the good work….
Oct 27th, 2008 at 9:33 am
For reasons that are not always apparent, some forum posts generate a lot of traffic to your site, while others (that you might have thought were especially insightful and well written) produce zilch. Forum posting is an aspect of SEM in which persistence often does pay off.
Oct 28th, 2008 at 5:39 am
Although time consuming, blogging and posting to forums really is one of the only ‘free’ ways to drive traffic to your site and persistance is the key thing to remember – bite the bullet and set aside a couple of hours a week to commit to it. It’s not just about getting lots of backlinks to your site – some forums can provide you with industry specific information and be a valuble tool to keep upto date with the latest developments within your specific sector. Definitely worth the effort.
Nov 10th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Web forums, message boards, discussion boards, discussion groups, discussion forums, bulletin boards are the synonyms that are often used for forums. By definition, internet forum is a web based application that is used for holding discussion on user generated content. Forums are not a new thing to web. Since basic objective of web was communication, forums came into existence quite early. Earlier forums had simple structure and functionality.
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Tanyaa
Social Bookmarking
Nov 27th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Forums are great way to promote a site. But a reall power came from blogs with similar topic to Your site. If people start to write about Youre project You are the winner.
Jan 10th, 2009 at 1:48 am
ya….i agree with you…forum is the best place to promote our site…
and it’s the easiest way to make our site famous. but make sure the website tat we wanna promote is valuable.
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sherene,
http://imhostedcouponcode.com
Jun 23rd, 2009 at 9:13 am
I agree, although we are just posting no follow links on forums, this increases the relevance of that keyword for your website, hence making it come higher in search engines.
Thanks
Jul 21st, 2009 at 11:22 am
I completely agree with you, forums are really good way to promote a website. It will more benefit when we promote in the same themes which we have. You article is very informative. You have nicely described whole things. I be grateful for your article.