When bloggers think of marketing, they usually think of blog commenting or social media marketing.
However, don’t forget about forum marketing.
Forum marketing has many benefits. If other marketing methods are not working for you, give forum marketing a shot.
I think the learning curve for social media marketing is steeper than forum marketing. Also, you’ll often reach a more targeted audience with forums than with social media sites.
Forum marketing is similar to blog commenting. It allows you to reach a targeted audience. However, forum marketing has an advantage over blog commenting because you can start a forum thread in the topic of your choosing. In blog commenting, you’re constrained by the topic of the blog post.
Tips
Here are some tips for improving your forum marketing.
Some niches don’t have forums. Do a search for [your niche] forum to see if there are forums in your niche.
Make sure the forum has traffic and activity. I like to market in forums that have many new posts every day. Also, you can check Alexa.
The forum you participate in should allow you to market your site. Some forums allow you to put your site in your signature while others don’t allow you to promote your site at all. Some forums even let you to put your add your feed into your profile. Then, the forum software pulls your newest post and links to it on every forum post you make.
You don’t have to create totally unique content. Feel free to reuse your old blog content. However, don’t copy and paste. Rewrite your old content. Google does not like duplicate content. You want your forum threads to get ranked. And if the forum members find that you have been using the same exact content from your blog, you might be labeled a spammer.
However, don’t just start new threads. Find other threads with topics that interest you and reply to the forum posts on those threads. By participating in other threads, you’ll build your reputation.
Feedback
What other forum marketing tips can you think of?