Friday, August 31, 2012

Getting Started With Forum Marketing


Forums are online communities that are useful for people to have a place to ask questions, get answers, and talk about different products and services. Forum marketing is one of the best ways to generate traffic for your online business. You can share your expertise in your niche or join discussions to bring attention to your business and site. Forums are online sites that people visit to get answers. They will find a post in a forum based on their search for a specific question. It's important not to try selling your products on forums. If you try, people will ignore it, but also the site administrator could suspend you or boot you out of the forum. What you can do on a forum is contribute to the community and answer questions.
On most forums, you can add your signature which will show up at the end of your posts; this is where you can add a link to your site. You can look at other forum users' signatures, especially those with high ratings to see how their signature was formatted, and what their profile looks like. Using them as examples is a good way to learn what works best.
It's recommended to find and join at least 5 forums based on your niche. You can check the page ranks of different forums, and you'll also want to go with the forums that have a high number of members and are the busiest. Stay away from forums that are managed by competitors, and those that contain a lot of spam. Going with forums with high page ranks is best, because your signature on each of your posts creates a backlink that is valuable based on the forum site's page rank. For example, posting on a PR6 site is much more valuable than posting on a PR1 site. The backlinks will also gradually up your search engine rank, therefore increasing traffic over time. Also, the site should be related to the content of your site in order to be valuable. That's why it's important to join forums that are in your niche.
Get all your forum accounts setup and begin to post. The longer you are a member and the more posts you have, the higher your rating can be and the better your credibility. Make sure to read and follow forum rules, as to avoid losing ranking and to avoid getting booted out. Different forums have different rules so make sure to read each one's rules. Carefully pick a username and profile picture. Make sure your username and picture are a good representation of you and your business. Your username should be something that people will remember. Avoid cartoon-type pictures; you are much more credible and trustworthy if people see you.
In your profile, you will describe your experience and expertise, so make it interesting enough that people will want to read it. Adding hobbies or some personal tidbits are helpful to help people connect with you. You can leave out things such as your telephone number to avoid identity theft and spam.
It's important to post on all the forums you join consistently. Post at least 5 posts on each forum every day. This will help to promote your site to the forum community, which are people who are already interested in the niche. Since forum marketing takes time to build, consistency is very important over the long term.
Sandy Root is an Expert Network Marketer. See how you can start your own network marketing business or expand your existing one with tools and training from some of the best. ==> http://rootempower.com


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