Marketing Guide Secrets

Forums can be a great source of traffic for your websites. They’re full of people who are interested in a particular topic or market, and if you play your cards right, you can generate a lot of traffic to your sites from them. Let’s look at some strategies for doing this.

The first thing to remember when you’re using forums to generate traffic is that you need to provide value, first and foremost. This is especially true if you’re new to the forum.

Signing up for a forum and starting to post promotional stuff right away is one of the quickest ways to guarantee you’ll not only get little or no traffic, but you might very well be banned from the forum as well.

Expect to spend some time posting and getting to know the forum before you add any links back to your websites. Different forums, and different markets, have varying degrees of acceptance of promotional posts. You’ll want to get a feel for the general attitude of the members before you start doing any self-promotion.

Most forums have rules about how and where you can link back to your own sites, so make sure you read the “rules” posts first. In most cases, links to your sites need to be kept in your signature, but that is not always the case. Some forums have paid sections for this type of thing, and posting anything promotional in another area isn’t allowed.

Even if the forum allows signature links, it’s a good idea to build a bit of a reputation before you add them. If you have links in your signature from the beginning, people may think your posts are all about getting your links in front of them, rather than about the content that you’re sharing.

Spend some time reading through older posts, particularly the more popular ones, to see how other people may or may not be doing any promotion. If you arrive at a forum where you can’t find any significant amount of promotional posts or signature files, you might be better off in the long run to move on and find another one.

Building relationships on forums is no different than doing it via social media or even in person. Interact with people, offer help where you can, ask questions – all the things that you would do if you were just a regular member (which you hopefully will be anyway, since that’s really the most effective way to build trust).

Forums can be a great source of traffic for your sites, but you need to make sure you look at them as a longer-term strategy. If you try to milk them for fast results, you’ll find it won’t last long, if at all.