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Why You Should Use (Not Abuse) Forums to Increase Your Traffic
Copyright 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaul
There are dozens of reasons why you should look up the
forums that are related to your market and post to them
often. Here are 3 to get you started.
1- Get to Know Your Market as both an Associate and An
Expert
The research alone is a good enough reason to at least sign
up to some forums and read. Just by reading posts in
forums, you can hear what your market concerns are,
straight from consumers. You'll be able to find what their
pains are - look particularly for frequent questions that
don't appear to have solutions.
For example, if you sell timeshares, and you join travel
communities, you may often hear questions asking for the
best times of year to visit a certain region or locale.
With this information you could start a section at your
site for every listing that tells the cheapest time to
travel for that area, the best time of year for good
weather, and other special bits of information a traveler
might want.
When you're comfortable enough to begin posting, after
watching the conversation for a few days, or perhaps even a
week, you might find that new people have questions that
you can help them with. By consistently becoming the go-to
person, you increase your credibility as a knowledgeable
expert, and people begin to trust your ability to provide
information.
2- Increase Your Site's Visibility With More Targeted Links
Back to Your Site
Many forums are run by hobbyists who aren't so much
concerned with marking money from their visitors, as having
an established community for discourse on certain issues.
These forums will often allow you to leave a link to your
site in every post. The ones that are open to public
viewing for visitors are also frequently spidered by search
engines.
If you set up your link correctly, you'll then have topical
links back to your own forum. Even if the search engine
spiders can't see these links at forums that can be viewed
by registered users only, you will also find that once you
become a part of the community, other members will click
your link out of curiosity or because they're looking for
something specific that you may have at your site.
Even forums that exist to gain more sales of their own
products often allow you to post your link, especially if
it isn't to a competing site. For example, internet
marketing forums run by people who sell do-it-yourself SEO
products may allow infopreneurs who sell a different type
of product, such as an autoresponder service, to post their
link freely.
The focus here, at all times, is to help other members, not
just to promote your product. Your link is in your
signature, so unless someone asks you a specific question,
you get far better results from being helpful than you do
by posting forum spam that gets deleted anyway.
3- Lurk, Listen and Learn
If you've been around forums at all, you already know that
there are often 8 to ten times more people registered and
not posting than there are people who actually visit and
participate.
Reading without ever posting is commonly known as
"lurking". I usually suggest that at least for the first
week, you should monitor the community you wish to join in
this way, just reading posts, and learning the personality
of the forum you'd like to post in - this keeps you from
committing any faux pas that might have you corrected by
another member, or even worse, banned.
Sometimes you'll find a forum that is appropriate to read,
but doesn't seem like the right place for commercial
posting. Or you might find that you're there to learn and
not to teach - or maybe you just don't have the time to
post as you'd like to. You can still learn a lot by being a
lurker.
When lurking in forums, your primary job is to listen
(figuratively speaking) and learn. Again, pay attention to
questions that come up repeatedly over the course of a
month or so. Be on the look out for rumored product or
technology developments. Find out who is the resident
expert - maybe this is the key person for an interview you
want to do, or an affiliate program you can join.
The most important thing you can learn from this exercise
is what annoyances your market is experiencing. If you sell
cat furniture, and you find out that a common complaint is
availability in remote markets, maybe you can change your
shipping policy to add international ordering and increase
the scope of your business.
Anywhere you can fit a solution to a problem can bring you
the sales you need. You may find out that you need to
change your product, to enhance it, or perhaps to take out
features your prospects just aren't interested in.
This is a good solution when you have the time to visit
forums and post or read. As you become more busy, you'll
find yourself at the forums less and less as a poster, so
this isn't necessarily a permanent solution. However, if
you follow these steps correctly, you'll soon have the
traffic to foster more community relations at your own site
as well.
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Tinu is a website promotion specialist who posts free
information on a variety of traffic tips in her blog at
http://www.freetraffictip.com .
More articles by Tinu AbayomiPaul - http://www.submityourarticle.com/articles/Tinu-AbayomiPaul-97/
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