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9 Steps To Growing Your Business Using Forum Marketing

April 10th, 2007 by Joshua Dorkin | Filed under Advertising, Forums, Making Money Online, Tutorials.

9 Steps To Successfully Market to a Forum Community
In a previous post The Direct and Indirect Approaches to Forum Marketing we talked about the two approaches to forum marketing. I’d like to share the 9 steps you will want to follow to forum marketing success; this is basically a primer on indirect forum marketing (the only approach I fully endorse).

  1. Find a forum in the niche you want to market to
  2. Check to be sure the site allows you to create a forum signature with a link to your business
  3. Set up an account
  4. Create a forum signature that includes the following information: your name, website/business name, web address, contact info (if any), description of the website/business (DO NOT USE A SALES PITCH - e.g. The Best Car Parts Shop Around - that stuff is useless). Be descriptive!
  5. Find the forum introductions section (most good forums will have one) and tell people about yourself. Talk about your business, but don’t just drop a sales pitch. Let people know what your interests are in the topic beyond your business.
  6. PARTICIPATE! Become an active member of the forums. Help others on the site. Get involved in the debate. POST, POST, POST! In time, the members will see you as an expert in the topic. With more posts, your site/business will have more exposure, and you will see results.
  7. If the forum has an area for members to advertise in, use it. (if not, don’t post ads on the site; just use your forum signature and your knowledge to do the selling for you)
  8. Volunteer to become a moderator on the site (forum administrators will often be willing to trade advertising for good moderators). In addition to the opportunity of getting more exposure, moderators are typically given more respect and looked at with even more authority then other members. With this comes more clicks and more business!
  9. Find other forums in the same area of interest and repeat steps 1-8.

Not only have I used these techniques, but I see others use them every day on my site! It is a proven formula. Give it a try and I know you won’t be disappointed!

« The Direct and Indirect Approaches to Forum Marketing
Article Marketing with Ezine Articles: “What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate!” »

12 Responses to “9 Steps To Growing Your Business Using Forum Marketing”

  1.   The Direct and Indirect Approaches to Forum Marketing by TimeForBlogging | 10/04/07

    [...] do I implement the indirect approach? To effectively use the indirect approach, just follow the 9 Steps To Growing Your Business Using Forum Marketing. Tags: advertising, business, direct, expert, forum, forum marketing, forums, hard sell, indirect, [...]

  2. Harry Casimir | 11/04/07

    Hello Josh,

    This is a very nice post. Nice blog you have here.

  3. josh | 11/04/07

    Thanks Harry. I appreciate it. I really love your site’s design, BTW. See you around.

  4. Carol | 11/04/07

    Hi Josh

    Glad you raised these points, I’m a great believer in forum marketing, but I see far too many folks just beating others over the head with their products or services. It is so much nicer and wiser to help out others first. I find that in certain forums I do not need to “market” to members anymore, when they need services or help they come to me. I takes time to build up the trust but its well worth it in the end.
    Great blog you have. I will definitely be back.

  5. josh | 11/04/07

    Carol -
    I hate it when people beat me on the head! Trust is the key. It takes time to build, but once established, people really do thinnk of you first!

  6. Got links? - Blog Carnival - issue 2 - Vol1 · imcarnival.com | 8/05/07

    [...] Dorkin presents 9 Steps To Growing Your Business Using Forum Marketing posted at Time For [...]

  7. LennyP | 8/05/07

    Most important step of all is to simply be a contributing member of the community. As you share your knowledge with the community you will become an expert in their eyes and they will want to see more from you.

  8. Marketing (r)evolution Carnival #5 - May 29, 2007 at Strategic Design | marketing & branding thoughts by Nick Rice | 29/05/07

    [...] Dorkin presents 9 Steps To Growing Your Business Using Forum Marketing posted at Time For [...]

  9. Brennan Ryan | 28/07/07

    All the points above are very good.

    As a forum operator, I can tell you nothing p***es me off more than some jerk coming in and making 1 or two spammy posts and contributing nothing more to the forums.

    As you rightly point out, by being a good participator you will get respect and work, and as the forum operator i will actively help and promote businesses who participate well in my forum.

    A bit of back scratching goes a long way…

    Bren

  10. Franck Silvestre | 30/07/07

    I like all the steps above, however, becoming a moderator can take a lot of your time.

  11. sandhaya | 16/03/08

    Just curious if anyone ever heard of WideCircles internet viral marketing service ? I was referred to it by another webmaster. Apparently they work by injecting viral messages into various forums, blogs, wiki’s, classifieds and so on. These messages then contain backlinks which help with SEO, as well attract lot of referral traffic. They bill around 0.40c per each post that’s been active for 5 days and say a single post can easily attract 100 or more hits a day, I am going to give them a try today and see how it goes. http://widecircles.com?imt=2

  12. Lovely | 9/04/08

    Thanks for the tip on how to used forums to market business, it is one of the most popular way people used to market the website and business today.
    Regards

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