One of the best place to generate free quality traffic is Online Forums. The great thing about forum is that you can target a particular group that fits the niche market you are interested in as an online entrepreneur. Forums provide a wonderful opportunity for you to build your reputation and trust online because you have the rare advantage of having a prior information about the people you are dealing with (you have access to their profiles and past posts).
Here are some tips to help you make the best use of the opportunity:
- Register with the forum using a name that is distinct and memorable. Ensure your business website is included in your profile (there is no harm in given your business address, even though it will identify you as an entrepreneur or a marketer, it is allowed). If allowed, make your website url part of your signatures (check the forum rule first, as different forum have different rules concerning this).
Go to the section of the forum where the group that you are targeting carry out their conversations.
- At this stage, play nice. Tap into conversations that are already ongoing. Contribute positively in conversations, but do not establish yourself as an authority yet, do not blow your own trumpet. Warning: Do not spam the forum. Do not seek for cheap popularity by making one sentence posts all over the forum. You will simply incur the wrath of the forum community and that may do damage to your online reputation. If you do not have a quality answer or contribution to a post, refrain from making any post to that thread.
- Observe how the members react to certain situations. What gets their approval and what irks them.
- Take time to identify the leaders in the conversations. Find out who everyone is talking about positively in the forum.
- Study what they write about. Find out why they have such a strong influence on the rest of the members and are able to sway opinions. Make a list of these people. Conduct a little research to understand why they are regarded as authorities in the forum.
- Establish a relationship with the leaders slowly. Ask lots of questions from those leaders. Dig into their profiles and past posts. Having this piece of information will enable you establish yourself as an authority in the same forum later on.
- When your presence is well established, start new threads that are either interesting or controversial (without stepping on toes!).
- Make posts that offer solutions to needs, or answers to questions. As you offer solutions to needs and answers to questions in the forum, you will get recognize as an expert in that area and best of all, you will gain the trust of the forum community.
- You can discuss lots of things about the niche that you can offer freely, however, restrain yourself from selling directly on the forum. Your sales should be done on your website, not the forum (except if there are threads provided for entrepreneurs to advertise their products and services, but even at that, you will be blowing your cover, by advertising!).
If you have tips that you have used and it worked for you, kindly share them in the comments. Cheers. If you enjoy this post subscribe to my RSS feed by clicking here. If you want it delivered straight into your email box, you can subscribe here.
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Tags: Blogging, Entrepreneur, Tips & Tricks
Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..
Matt Hanson
[re=305]Matt Hanson[/re]:
Thanks Matt, that was so nice of you. I visited your blog and I am glad I did. I was able to pick some tips on how to forge ahead. Thanks for visiting.
Some absolutely fantastic tips that I hadn’t heard before. I was actually expecting you to repeat: “Put a call to action in the forum signature,” but am glad to say I was pleasantly surprised.
Congratulations on an absolutely phenomenal body of work. Consider me the newest regular reader.
Mwangi – the Displaced Africans last blog post..African Man Worth Looking Up To:Derrick Ashong
[re=312]Mwangi – the Displaced African[/re]:
Thanks Mwangi. I visited your blog, it was a lovely site to behold. I am proud to be an African too. I strongly belief that God did not make any mistake in placing each human being in a particular race or continent. Thanks for visiting and contributing to the discussion. Cheers.
I found your post informative and helpful to me of knowing how to take advantage of forums. Thank you and have a great day!
Armils last blog post..Free Store Club – A Review
Really good tips. Some reinforced some ideas i had and i learnt new ones too.
Those are absolutely wonderful tips. I wish I could say more.
Terrific advice and insights. Thanks!
Janets last blog post..The Abundant Mindset to Attract More
[re=318]Armil[/re]:
Thanks Armil for visiting and commenting. It is a pleasure sharing the tips.
[re=320]Nigeria Websiter Designer[/re]:
Thanks for visiting.
[re=322]naijabloggers[/re]:
Thanks. The compliment is encouraging enough, I won’t ask for more except to request that you subscribe to my RSS feeds. 😉 (oops, I already asked for more)
[re=323]Janet[/re]:
Thanks Janet. It was a pleasure having you around.
Good read, although “controversial” without toe-stepping is tough to pull off and may seem like you’re just trying to stir the pot.
Stumbled
Jacob from Group Writing Projectss last blog post..Come Vote for Best Posts in PureBlogging’s How To Group Writing Project
Greetings!
Found your post surfing for entrepreneur forums — and I’m glad I did! Great info, presentation and style!
You might want to visit my blog, YEisHere [http://yeishere.quassia.com] Qassia is good for ad revenue sharing AND exposure.
I’ve joined your community and will be back — often!
YE is Here!
Greetings!
Just wanted 2 add that I’ve launched an online Global Enterprise Network where you and your readers are welcomed to come and list their businesses, tips and information — FREE!
YE is Here!
Thank for this kind of advice it is informative i now know that image building is important in the forum.
little word i s enought for the wise.
Hi Everyone,
I have a carpet cleaning business in Houston,TX that was doing pretty good until the economy went bad, and with it my clientele. I have a website for the business but I dont
know what I have to do the get it to show up in a search. Right now it’s somewhere in the yahoo/google netherworld (LOL).
Is there someone on here that can give me some insight or know of anyone that coud give me insight on how I can get my local website on the front
page of a Yahoo or Google search to increase my business without it costing me 5 or 10k $$$? If so please share with me.
I thank you and my hungry over-eating children thank you.
thanks,
@TonyB
You failed to give us the link to your website. That would have made it easier to recommend what you can do to get your website indexed by Google.
If you give us the link, some of us will be able to help you without asking for money in return. There are some little tricks that friends can use to help your website get index and acquire at least a PR1 without you spending a dime. Cheers.
Pls i think someone has made a comment on the difficulties of opening an account with alertpay.com (the say that there is an errror that has occur that the are working on it it )pls try and confirm this, and your reply was that we should follow your link .i did that but still i am also having same problem in opening an account. pls can this be linked to the IP address that i am using or is that the alertpay actually has a problem .thanks
This sounds interesting. Thanks for posting.
This is a good article. Traffic from forum is sometimes more targeted and adds good value to a blog. Thanks for sharing this tips.
thanks for giving such a informative tips ,i want to share your site in my favourites on stumbleupon,