Network Marketing Journey

Building relationships through forums is a terrific, community based way to both market your business and make friends. If you were to go to some of the forums I frequent you would find post counts in the 80-100 range and growing all the time. There are many who have far more posts number in the multiple thousands and this is because they recognize the power of forum marketing. Forum marketing:

• Allow potential customers get a feel for who I am.
• Share my knowledge on subjects I know and build links at the same time.
• Gives me an avenue to bounce ideas off of people and get valuable feedback.
• Provides a place for me to investigate the programs and products being pushed before purchasing.

The question is how to get the click through from your signature line, and then convert them into leads and beyond. Forum marketing can be one of the more fun ways to spread the word about your business because you’re interacting with people, talking about fun stuff, joking around and having fun. But are your posts producing results?

Choose Your Forums Wisely

Generally, I recommend picking 5 forums you enjoy participating in and building a presence in those forums. However, if you are just beginning to experiment with forum marketing you could pick 2 forums and focus on building links on those forums before seeking more forums. This will allow you to focus and prevent the possibility of being spread out to thin. Not to mention you’ll be able to build links and credibility in a given forum faster this way as well.

Ideally these forums should be connected to the industry or industries of your business, otherwise your preaching to a people who will not care. In the beginning this may require that you do some hunting through numerous forums to find the ones which make you feel at home but you shouldn’t have a problem finding one or two in a short period of time.

Big-Boards, a forum directory, might be able to help in your search. Otherwise you can do relevant searches in your favorite search engine.

Once You Find a Forum

• Fill out your profile as much as possible. Use your real name in your profile so people know who they are looking at. Add links to your website, and its essential that you leave contact information so prospective clients and partners can easily reach you. One of the best things you can do is add a photo. This gives everyone viewing your comments and profile an added way to connect with you.
• Introduce yourself. Don’t be anonymous. Most forums will have an ‘Introduce Yourself’ section. The them a little about yourself (within your comfort level, of course) and each time you post from that time on make every effort to be yourself. Allow the people who are participating in the threads as well as the lurkers to get to know you. People buy from people they like. Not from strangers.
• Be active in the forum. Answering questions in your primary field of interest (subjects in line with your reasons for marketing on the forum), welcome new people, ask relevant questions when you have them and contribute value when you have the answer will go a long way in getting you the attention you deserve.
• Do NOT Sell Your Company. If there is one point I can’t stress enough it would be to avoid blatantly selling your company, sell yourself. If people like you, they will look at the information in your signature of their own accord.

You can certainly put an ad in the ‘advertise here’ section of the forum but no one appreciates people who try to squeeze their company link information into a conversation. Its rude and considered spam. Ultimately, your post could end up being edited, deleted and beyond that you could get banned depending on the forum policies.

It is far more effective to play by the rules and build network of friends and credibility over time.

Quick Tip: Be positive and professional in your discussions. Don’t let your emotions get the best of you. Emotionally charged discussions can be damaging to you and the others involved. It reflects badly on the companies but even more importantly, it casts a negative light on you. Your comments will be forever archived in the search engines, especially if the forums are popular, since they tend to get spidered often.

Additional Posting Tips

Optimize your posts. Now, I’m not saying that you should go as far as to cram as many keywords as you can into your posts. That would defeat the purpose of being on the forums. Forums are for communicating with people, but since forum threats and get indexed in the search engines it makes sense to have a little optimization in them.

Participate in popular and highly visible threads. Popular threads mean more eyeballs and greater opportunities. Chances are you’ll meet more people and the oppportunity to help more people will present themselves within these active threads.

It’s also worth noting that these threads can often be indexed in the search engines also. Largely because of the volume of keywords and topics discussed in them. The only thing I would suggest is to try and focus on the threads which cover topics you either know or are deeply involved in. There are exceptions to this, moms talking about mommy topics can obviously be another way to meet interesting people as well.

Be careful of the time spent on forums. It can be easy to justify the time you spend bantering back and forth with your friends on the forums. The problem is it isn’t cost effective use of your time to spend a great deal of time on the forums everyday.

Since a big part of your reason for being on the forums is to brand yourself as a knowledgeable or up and coming expert in your given area it stands to reason that you don’t want to be jabbering all day about anything and everything. Enjoy yourself but adhere to your marketing plan as much as possible.

In Conclusion

This form of marketing is easy to do and you don’t have to be any kind of expert to benefit from it. By being honest about your status and asking questions will brand you as an honest individual and people will be far more willing to help you. Then as your knowledge grows you’ll be able to pay their kindness forward and help others as they come along.

Have fun and see you in the forums!

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