No matter if you are new to Internet Marketing or have been in the industry for years, Internet Marketing forums are extremely useful. Depending on your specific goals, you can engage with a targeted audience that can help drive traffic, improve lead generation, and build brand recognition, all through effective forum engagement.
Let’s take a look at some specific ways you can utilize forums.
1. Getting Feedback
One of the greatest things about forums is the ability to get free, REAL feedback from a community of people just like you. Personally I am doing this right now for an upcoming product launch (hint, hint), to gather recommendations, suggestions and beta testers to make the product the best it can be come launch time. Even if you are not working on product launch, you can get feedback for things like client work, marketing strategies, lucrative niches, etc…
2. Finding JV Partners
If you are looking for joint venture partners to help promote an upcoming product, forums are a great place to start. Usually you can find threads related just to people who are looking to connect with each other to make their product launches a success. Regardless of the type of traffic and subscribers you have, you can probably find someone who is in a similar situation as you and work together to help promote each of your product launches.
3. Forum Participation is Authentic
Probably my favorite reason for participating in IM forums, is the ability to engage with people who are authentic and tell it to you straight. Unlike a lot of the popular blogs in the IM niche, forum participators are more outgoing and willing to share their opinions. From my experience it seems like forum users have their own style, compared to blog commentors, Tweeters, and FB users.
With new product launches happening every week, it can be hard to tell which products are actually valuable and which are full of ****. To get the real information about a product instead of just getting sucked in to a sales video, try scouring the forums for people who have actually purchased the product. Before I buy any IM product, I always check a few forums out to see what people are saying about it. So I recommend before you go out and spend $77 on a traffic formula that promises $122,355.67/month with 8 clicks of your mouse, make sure you get the real facts about whether it is worth your time and money.
4. Finding Quality Workers
Most IM forums have an entire section for members who are either looking to hire someone or are looking for work. Of course, like any job board you may need to weed through some of the posting of people who don’t have the qualifications you are looking for, but nevertheless it can be a wondering free resource for finding workers who fit your budget/needs.
5. Drive Lots of Traffic
Just like anything you do online, the more time you put into something, the more you will get out of it. The great thing about popular IM forums, are they receive a ton of quality traffic and they allow you to add your forum signature under every post you write. Basically this provides an opportunity for people to click on a link to your blog, website, product, services, etc… If you establish yourself as an authority and are consistent with your postings, people will notice you and want to learn more about who you are.
You also are able to add your other social media profiles to each post. So other members can click on each social media button and start to follow you socially.
6. Sell Your Products/Services
Forums are a great way to put your products and services in front of your target audience. Recently I found a Warrior by the name of Joe Finn who offers an outstanding service. For $10/month he provides what he called “Backlink Packets” where each week he sends you 10 high PR websites that you can acquire great backlinks from. Joe states on the forum, that all he does is promote his service through the Warrior Forum and his signature.