Why You Should Use (Not Abuse) Forums to Increase Your Traffic

By: Tinu AbayomiPaul

Copyright 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaul There are dozens of reasons why
you should look up the forums that are related to your market
and post to them often. Here are 3 to get you started. 1- Get to
Know Your Market as both an Associate and An Expert The research
alone is a good enough reason to at least sign up to some forums
and read. Just by reading posts in forums, you can hear what
your market concerns are, straight from consumers. You''ll be
able to find what their pains are - look particularly for
frequent questions that don''t appear to have solutions. For
example, if you sell timeshares, and you join travel
communities, you may often hear questions asking for the best
times of year to visit a certain region or locale. With this
information you could start a section at your site for every
listing that tells the cheapest time to travel for that area,
the best time of year for good weather, and other special bits
of information a traveler might want. When you''re comfortable
enough to begin posting, after watching the conversation for a
few days, or perhaps even a week, you might find that new people
have questions that you can help them with. By consistently
becoming the go-to person, you increase your credibility as a
knowledgeable expert, and people begin to trust your ability to
provide information. 2- Increase Your Site''s Visibility With
More Targeted Links Back to Your Site Many forums are run by
hobbyists who aren''t so much concerned with marking money from
their visitors, as having an established community for discourse
on certain issues. These forums will often allow you to leave a
link to your site in every post. The ones that are open to
public viewing for visitors are also frequently spidered by
search engines. If you set up your link correctly, you''ll then
have topical links back to your own forum. Even if the search
engine spiders can''t see these links at forums that can be
viewed by registered users only, you will also find that once
you become a part of the community, other members will click
your link out of curiosity or because they''re looking for
something specific that you may have at your site. Even forums
that exist to gain more sales of their own products often allow
you to post your link, especially if it isn''t to a competing
site. For example, internet marketing forums run by people who
sell do-it-yourself SEO products may allow infopreneurs who sell
a different type of product, such as an autoresponder service,
to post their link freely. The focus here, at all times, is to
help other members, not just to promote your product. Your link
is in your signature, so unless someone asks you a specific
question, you get far better results from being helpful than you
do by posting forum spam that gets deleted anyway. 3- Lurk,
Listen and Learn If you''ve been around forums at all, you
already know that there are often 8 to ten times more people
registered and not posting than there are people who actually
visit and participate. Reading without ever posting is commonly
known as "lurking". I usually suggest that at least for the
first week, you should monitor the community you wish to join in
this way, just reading posts, and learning the personality of
the forum you''d like to post in - this keeps you from committing
any faux pas that might have you corrected by another member, or
even worse, banned. Sometimes you''ll find a forum that is
appropriate to read, but doesn''t seem like the right place for
commercial posting. Or you might find that you''re there to learn
and not to teach - or maybe you just don''t have the time to post
as you''d like to. You can still learn a lot by being a lurker.
When lurking in forums, your primary job is to listen
(figuratively speaking) and learn. Again, pay attention to
questions that come up repeatedly over the course of a month or
so. Be on the look out for rumored product or technology
developments. Find out who is the resident expert - maybe this
is the key person for an interview you want to do, or an
affiliate program you can join. The most important thing you can
learn from this exercise is what annoyances your market is
experiencing. If you sell cat furniture, and you find out that a
common complaint is availability in remote markets, maybe you
can change your shipping policy to add international ordering
and increase the scope of your business. Anywhere you can fit a
solution to a problem can bring you the sales you need. You may
find out that you need to change your product, to enhance it, or
perhaps to take out features your prospects just aren''t
interested in. This is a good solution when you have the time to
visit forums and post or read. As you become more busy, you''ll
find yourself at the forums less and less as a poster, so this
isn''t necessarily a permanent solution. However, if you follow
these steps correctly, you''ll soon have the traffic to foster
more community relations at your own site as well.

Tinu AbayomiPaul:
Tinu is a website promotion specialist who posts free
information on a variety of traffic tips in her blog at
http://www.freetraffictip.com .