Forums – Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Forums are social media at it’s best. With a small investment of time you can bring traffic to your blog, help others and get information for your self.

At its most basic sense, social media is how people discover, read and share news, information and content. A good forum does exactly that.

How to choose a good forum.

• Find a forum that fits your niche. Simply Google “your niche forums”. You will be surprised! There are pet lover forums, topical fish forums, parenting forums, you name it you got it.

• Find a forum that allows links to your blog and other forms of social media; Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin.

• Choose a forum with active members. Forums with lots of viewers but only a few active members, could be an indicator of a closed clickish forum.

• Quality counts – a small forum with good quality content just might fit you needs. Check to see if the forum is a chat room or really providing valuable data.

How to be an effective forum participant.

• Be helpful and friendly. Reply with helpful and honest answers. Earn the respect of the other forum members.

• Go the extra mile to provide valuable data. Give value with every comment.

• Start interesting threads. You can keep a slow forum going and show your expertise by starting and running interesting threads.

• Visit the forum often. Follow up on threads you have been involved with.

• Be sure to give value before trying to draw from the forum. Build up trust.

• Acknowledge those who have helped you. Let others know they have been of value.

• Write a great profile of your self. Don’t be afraid to toot your horn.

• Write a great signature line. Make your signature line stands- out, use bold text, color, a great quote or your purpose. This is the key point for directing traffic back to your blog.

The advantages of participating in a forum.

• You can help others.

• Bring traffic to your blog.

• Learn from others in your niche. Be sure to ask for help from your forum friends. You always have more to learn.

• Find others you can collaborate with. Many a great joint venture has been made on forums. Become twitter friends, retweet each others data. Push each others facebook groups.

• Find other bloggers to guest post.

The key.

• Time is at a premium, it is easy to waste valuable time on forums. The key is to get in and learn the forum well, learn all about the forum. In the future you will be able to use the forum quickly and efficiently.

• Stay on topic. Others time is at a premium also. Value that.

• If a forum is not working for you, move on. Find a new forum that will.

No matter your niche there is a forum just right for you. You can quickly be an expert in your niche and drive traffic to your blog by being a great participant.

To your forum success,

Sheila

P.S. Good reads: Problogger and Bloggingbits.

P.S.S. Participating in forums as part of your social media marketing strategy will bring a return on your investment.

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