subject: How To Use Forums To Promote Your Website [print this page] Interaction within forums is a great vehicle to promote your website to other Internet Marketers and potential customers.Forums are essentially a virtual community that meets to discuss issues or share opinons that relate to their chosen market or business.Internet Marketers can use these forums when they are first starting out as a learning tool,but there are also other ways to optimize the forums to promote your website or chosen niche business. Three of theseways are listed below....
1.CreateA Discussion Forum For Your Website.
An excellent way to get people to engage the content on your site and to revisit it frequently is to create a forum.Many hosting services now allow you to do this with a plugin. From there, you can simply manage the site through the control panel,adding forums,managing sticky notes,and deleting posts as necessary.
Of course,creating and managing a forum can be a tricky process. And it is important for you to understand that your forum will not be successful unless you dedicate a significant amount of time to the launch phase.
Without dedicating this time to your site,it will be hard to get it to go from a 'ghost' forum,where no one posts to a forum, to one where there is lively activity and where it is mentioned on other sites.
2. Populate Your Discussion Forum.
Although it may seem like a lot of work, launching your discussion forum is only the start. It is a pre-requisite for one day having a populous forum,but is by no means sufficient for creating a good forum. In fact,most forums start and end as 'ghost' forums because their owners never take the time to populate them.
If you want your forum to be successful,you will have to take the time to populate it with individuals who will engage in lively discussions; and who will perpetuate your forum by mentioning it elsewhere.
There are several ways to do this,I've listed some below.
i) Create threads on the forum about important topics in your niche. Since the new visitors will find that the forum is empty,they will be hesitant to post; however, if there is at least one other person posting threads,they may take the time to respond.
ii) Pull forum members from other blogs and forums. Find places where other individuals already engage in active discussions; and solicit them for your forum indirectly. You can do this by including a signature with your forum and blog posts that link to your forum. Overall,remember that if you want to retain your forum members,you will have to keep them engagaed. So, as you step up your promotion efforts, remember to simultaneously scale up your on-forum engagements efforts.
3. Make Money From Your Discussion Forum.
Once you have created a successful discussion forum,which has both 'core' members and lurkers, it is time to start figuring out how to reap areturn on your investment. Personally, I would suggest that you adopt one or more of the following three strategies:
i) Use a service like Adsense to place pay-per-click ads on your forum.
ii) Use the forum to announce product launches and to promote sales.
iii) Use the forum to promote your products through permanent threads.
In addition to these three strategies, there are dozens of others; however, these are perhaps the best options to start with. Alternatively, you might consider using the forum to address customer service issues and questions about your products. This is a good way to increase customer engagement; and to encourage customers to buy new products.
