Forums can be a great way to communicate with industry experts, gather feedback, position yourself as an industry leader and drive relevant traffic to your site. The first step to marketing via forums is to find the right forums, where people are discussing your industry. Using forum search engines like BoardTracker, BoardReader or BigBoards can help you find relevant forums quickly. However it is important to focus on forums that are actively being participated in and are not filled with spam. A post of reference is if the forum has over 1,000 registered members and 5,000-15,000 posts, usually that indicates that those forums are quality forums.
A few quick tips to remember when marketing in forums.
- Sign up for a profile ASAP (member “active since” can please a bearing on authority)
- Understand the forum guidelines and do not violate them
- Know who the big players are in the forums and start a discussion with them
- Create a complete profile and custom avatar
- Spend time understanding the flow of the forums, before contributing to them
- Add your website in your profile, however do not add a link in the forum discussion to just “get a link”
Here is a top 10 list of quality internet marketing/web forums that are worth participating in and provide valuable content.
