Even in the face of Skype, Facebook and YouTube, forums are still a huge force to reckon with in the fields of online marketing and communication. Thousands, if not millions, of web-users rely on forums to acquire new information and tips. That said, there is a plethora of ways to get traffic from forums which if harnessed wisely can significantly boost your web marketing efforts.
In this brief write-up, we have compiled a couple of tips that are essential for maximization of the available forum marketing opportunities. Please note that these (tips) need to be applied gradually as successful online marketing cannot be accomplished overnight.
How To Get Traffic From Forums
Find the right forum
This is the ultimate tip as far as successful forum marketing is concerned. Simply put, you have to pick a popular forum that efficiently caters for your niche. We hope that by this time you already have an idea of some of the top-notch sites within your field. If not, do a Google search for the relevant key words.
Some questions to ask while choosing a forum include:
How large and prominent is it?
How active are its members?
Does the forum allow signatures?
It’s always wise to concentrate your marketing efforts on just one forum. Multiple forums will dilute your efforts and you’ll not make sizeable gains at the end of the day (safe for when you’re marketing several sites in different niches).
Creating the face of your marketing campaign
Now that you’ve already chosen the best forum within your niche the next step is to register and create your profile. Take time to do this. Build a clean profile so that your potential clients see you as a trusted authority. You don’t want to appear one-dimensional or shady. In particular, make sure to choose your username carefully (choose a name that fits your niche), put a decent photo (it should give a face to your username) and remember to include your up-to-date bio.
Let your signature market you
Your signature is a constant message that appears below each post you make on the forum (please note that not all forums allow signatures due to spammers). A professional signature is essential for luring more traffic to your profile (and by extension your products). Don’t make the common mistake that most new marketers make- that of using informal signatures. Such (informal signatures) tend to paint one as a spammer. Instead, utilize these couple lines of text to professionally introduce yourself and to offer a link to your site.
Professional signature essentials
The name of your blog.
Your blogs tagline (Detailing what your site is about).
A useful link.
To Get Traffic From Forums, Get Working!
Reply to past threads
Browse various forum posts and find a couple of interesting topics that you believe you can reply to. Take a look at some of your posts and choose the ones that would best answer the questions posted therein and make a small but smart introduction including a link to your content. At the end of the day, it’s all about being helpful and providing essential support to those who need it-whether or not they want to visit your site or not.
People tend to love sites that solve their issues in an amicable manner. Take advantage of this slot to attract more traffic to your site.
Start new and meaningful threads
New threads are essential for having your posts reading the first in the thread. The first posts always attract the most attention from users and if exposure is your craving, you have to invest in new threads every so often.
Talking of new threads, it’s not just about starting any sorts of discussions. It’s about starting issue-based topics that touch on important (but relevant) areas that of life. A great way to start a thread is by asking genuine questions that you feel many people will be interested to learn about or answer. If you don’t have any relevant questions, you can ask for opinions. The power of a thread lies in how good and well-thought the initial post is.
Be the active force behind the campaign
In order to attract traffic from discussion forums you should be available to produce new content and information at least a couple of times a week. If you want your threads to rank on page one of the forum, you have to remain very active (any form of marketing be it online marketing or offline marketing requires an active force behind it). So, don’t just post content and sit back and expect traffic to drag itself into your safe custody-it hardly happens anyway. Roll up your sleeves and make active forum participation a part of your blogging process.
Always remain positive
Forums are just like any other social places. You can be sure to meet all kinds of people. Some rude others arrogant and even others whose aim is to discourage you in your efforts (well of course you can be sure to find a good number of good people). Whatever the case, you have to remain very positive in your efforts. Don’t reply to negative comments by being extra negative or arrogant. Focus on the positive side of things. Pay more attention to useful information encourage fellow forumers to engage in constructive discussions and debates. If you appear vengeful and rude, chances are that people will not be interested to even see your stuff-now that’s bad!
Open Your Doors Wide
The journey to successful forum marketing is full of ups and downs. You have to be thoroughly prepared to take each step ahead in the best manner possible keeping in mind the tips and ideas discussed in this article. Most importantly remember that online marketing is a continuous process, it requires consistent input and fulltime commitment for it to bear good fruits.
As you embark on a journey to get traffic from forums, we sincerely hope that your efforts will start paying off soon. Aside from that, we wish you the best of luck in your endeavors.
I am an Admin and Co-Editor at SEOAllrounder.com & T shirt Printing Dubai Company in Dubai called T shirt printing, providing fresh tips for blogging. Make sure to subscribe to my blog for fresh business ideas
Getting traffic from forums need lot of patience as one needs to be a active member of the forum. The thread started by one must be useful and meaningful.
Patience is always needed to build traffic from any type of source not only just forums.
Post really useful information in the forums. Increase your reader base and improve your profile. After that post some links for getting traffic, don’t ever try overdoing it. It may lead you to getting spammed.
That for rounding it all up but trust me you need to post 500 post to start getting good traffic and meaning full traffic.
From my personal experience, you need to interact more and participate in the forum discussions consistently to generate converting traffic to your blog/website. However, it’s a slow process…
You need to bare in your mind that, forum traffic are targeted ones.. compared to the random traffic you’re getting from other sources.
Great info there Conor.
I normally take the traffic from forum and drive them to my squeeze page. 6 out of 10 always sign up for my newsletter.
Hi Saad,
Forums are a great place to connect with people who are interested in the very same niche as you are. Hence if you stay active and helpful at a particular forum, it can be a good source of high quality traffic.
Which forum do you use to get traffic? for me DP and WF is the best.
Forums are indeed one of the Best Ways to get BackLinks and Good Traffic. But some people Just register and Start new threads Just for the Backlinks to get them mentioned in “Unique Domain Backlinks”.
I feel its stupid to go to forums to build backlinks because one day they will all become no follow, hence no point wasting your time building backlinks on forums and secondly forums gives out 1000’s backlinks to other users and decreasing the value of the backlink.
Forums are a great way to get known. Even if you ask some good questions you are bound to get lot of replies and people will know who you are and once you start answering others questions well, that\’s even better. You will start getting followers.
Its always better to concentrate on a small forum than a big one because its easy to generate traffic and leads from them
Hi Saad,
Like you have pointed out, the only way to pull real traffic from forums is being active and providing value. I’m not often on forums but each time I go to WF or DF and provide value, I often get more in terms of traffic
Thanks for sharing these tips to help us
Hey Buddy , How are you doing?
You have just named my 2 favorite forums there who get me butt load of traffic and leads. 😀
Yeah i agree with your points about getting traffic from forums… but during these days most of the bloggers a neglecting the usage of forums for link building.
i never used forums for link building because its sucks to go to forums for link building because 1000’s other people are doing the same hence reducing the link juice. Aim to write awesome threads that you get visitors and convert them in to your readers with your great content.
Well I too agree that forums are great way to bring referral traffic, not sure how it can affect SERPs, recently I read on a blog that links from forums are not going to increase SERPs.
But it`s important to particpate in forums to increase leads.
Thank you for reminding me about forums.
~@Khajamoin1
I do believe it that posts on forums will not increase your serps and I know the answer as well. Its becuase there are 1000’s of other people who have signature links on the same thread as yours hence it decreases the value of link juice but at the same time if you have around 1000 to 2000 posts on once forum then it can help your blog boost your rank up.
Loved to know that you know the importance of forums and how it can be used to drive traffic to increase leads. 😀
Forum posting is one of the best ways to get targeted visitors in to our site that we can get many benefits and if the forum post which we replied or created get Google’s first page we can get massive traffic. So forum posts is always good to drive targeted traffic.
Amazing point there Naven, good forums like DP and WF are ranked very well on google thats I am active on these DP and I really get good traffic from the forums.
Its all about finding a right forum as I said in my first point.
Awesome information mate. I liked in and going to share with my friends too. Mostly bloggers failed due to insufficient traffic to their blogs and you shared another door to get traffic to blogs.
I think, this content is not only useful for newbies, but also for others too. Keep it up bro.
Thanks 🙂
haha thats great Mohd Akhtar , finding the good forum to get traffic is the only hardest past but once you have found a good forum its time to bomb it with useful content and squeeze out traffic or generate leads 😉
Nice Information Saad. The forums are really a very great way which is usually ignored. I have seen many users saying that they get Bored to read threads. But i guess you can most Discussions over Forums, hence Big Traffic Drivers
VERY true! forums are the best way to find people of your own niche and successful blogging is all about making connections with other people in your own niche!
If you ask me to be honest about my traffic I would say I get more traffic from forums than facebook ;).
How to know that forums is allowing signatures or not ?
Basically all forums allow signatures , you can browse through some threads and see if people have signatures or not.
Ohh…it is that easy, and I was not knowing that.Thanks a lot,will surely going to be regular on some popular blogs.Can you suggest some through which I can receive traffic ?
it all depends on your niche , if yours is a multi niche site then its hard to put in everything together.
My blog’s niche is Tech.Then any forums you will like to suggest me ?
A highly informative site that can easily benefit many like me
Forum posting is the best way for getting subtle amount of natural traffic to the site and this effort is appraises by search engine too
Hey Saad,
Nice article.
I have signed up on many forums after seeing so many articles on its benefits. Though I am with many forums, I never work on building relationships on it. The only forum I have remained active, an that too very less, is WarriorForum.
I am now thinking of starting one popular forum in order to build some reputation of my own. This could surely work in my favor as I am thinking of selling my first ebook on the forum.
Thanks anyway for the awesome tips.
Keep Rocking 🙂
Participating in forums is indeed a sure way to get traffic to your site. Naeem tells us just how to go about it in a systematic manner so that it benefits even a tyro like me.
just post genuine stuff, gain attention by making your username unique. Try to help as many user you can in order to generate leads.
Tip : 5-10 posts wont do the trick for steady traffic flow.
I haven’t really tried joining forums. I am planning to try it this year.
Hi Saad,
I am using digital forum. I got level in this forum good. now in my account name “Member”. Can i use signature in my account. please say me 🙂
Digital point is great and a very active forum , I basically started my learning from there.
The only problem is don’t use DP forum to create backlinks because its nofollow and secondly 1000’s others are doing the same.
Try to build trust in the forum and get leads 😉
Every blogger wants to get mass traffic for his/her blog in accordance with the niche. There are various ways we can do to generate traffic. But of course we must be wiseful to choose the suitable ways. One of the ways is to be active in a forum. This posting is easily explaining how to choose the suitable forum related to our niche. So this posting is very useful and so far quite relevant and able to fullfill our needs in building our blogs. Thank you very much for sharing this.
wow. brief yet very helpful tips. I really have some problems with doing seo on my little blog. I never use forum After reading this post i decide to do it .
Well I have never used Forums earlier due to lack of time. But after reading your post, I too think it could be a good source of traffic.
I was looking for some tips related to traffic from forums and this post is really an eye opener for me..
Thanks for posting..:)
very informative article… but i dont agree on one point “Reply to past threads”. There are many forums in which if you reply on threads more than 6 months or say a year old than you would probably be warned and if you continues you will get banned or worst your ip would be banned..
regards
sanyam
Oh really? Thanks for addressing the issue but I haven’t seen those blogs though because I am frequent visitor of DP and WF but I don’t see this issue there.
a perfect bidirectional exchange of views on forums are the best source for learning and getting adequate amount of traffic it suits perfectly to search engine too
I have been kicked off these forums so much times because i did’nt understand how they works I’m so happy to read this ,,here is a good ste that pays to share videos and give you tons of traffic http://uvioo.com/video/?m=empower22k
But currently is not allowing forum signatures, according to Google link guideline. How we can get backlinks without forum signatures because forums are very essential for link building and increase in credibility?
I still see many forums providing signatures , if not then you can make a use full post in forum and make a “Read more” link to blog post. It should work 😉
I agree with your all point. Signature is very useful for getting traffic high. But I want to know that why some website will not allow signature?
That’s some good advice. It’s important to become a valuable contributer to a forum to get traffic from it.
I agree, forum participation is one of the strategies in the SEO field, but this strategy alone is not enough to rank your site or rank your keyword….
I think forum is a very good way to drive traffics since other people with the same interest can know about your website and become return visitors.
I will use this post as my personal guide so hopefully i can get some wider audience
Nice Blog Getting traffic from forums need lot of patience as one needs to be a active member of the forum. The thread started by one must be useful and meaningful.Every blogger wants to get mass traffic for his/her blog in accordance with the niche. There are various ways we can do to generate traffic. But of course we must be wiseful to choose the suitable ways. One of the ways is to be active in a forum. This posting is easily explaining how to choose the suitable forum related to our niche.
Thanks For the Blog