Create Your Own Forum Buzz

Website-Promotion-To-Increase-Traffic.com Forum Strategies are:

• The importance of branding yourself in your niche
• How to position yourself to increase website traffic
• How to properly make and use a signature box for message boards, emails and articles
• Tips to developing your own message board
• Information on Spam, Moderators and Hosting

Message boards are like meeting rooms where like minded people meet to discuss different topics. These are great places tomeet highly targeted prospects that are interested in your website information or product. Many people make the grave mistake of overlooking thetrue value in forums. As you read on, I will prove to you why.

1. Highly targeted niche prospects.

2. Forum visitors have already been introduced to your business concepts.

3. By giving good advice in discussion boards, over a period of time, you can brand yourself as an expert.

4. Learn new techniques and become more experienced in your niche area.

5. The use of a signature boxto promote your service or business. Thus, driving traffic to your website.

6. You can build relationships with like minded and professional people in your niche.

7. The ability to look for future business, products or affiliate opportunities.

Your asking yourself how much traffic can really be generated from a message board? It is not how much you should be asking yourself, but how targeted is this traffic. You will not have a rush of traffic with this type of website promotion. If you went out and postedregularly on 6 forums for 30 minutes every second day, you would receive anywhere from 5+ clicks per day. (5 clicks is very conservative)

You have to remember this is highly targeted traffic. Even if it is only 5 visitors, it is 5 visitor who want to hear what you have to say. These people do not need any convincing. They are hot leads readyto be sold on your opportunity or product.

Also, your messages will forever be on that particular message board. Potentially prospects may read previously posted messages and click through to your website. The more you add valuable content to a discussion board the more future clicks you can expect to your website.


Signature Box

How do I have this highly targeted prospect click to website? Use what is called a signature box. Use what is called a signature box. It is 2 to 7 lines with 40 to 50 characters per line. It contains details about your self and what you are offering. It is like a miniature advertisement of yourself.

These signature box's are placed at the end of your articles, emails, and forum posts. Many discussion boards will have guide lines such as how many links you can have and how long your message can be. Just for reference, a signature box call also be called a resource box.


No No's with Discussion Boards

When you do become a member of a message board, the administrator of the message board will have a set of guidelines to follow.

I will list some important etiquette you must demonstrate in discussion boards:

• Do not blatantly promote your opportunity in your posts. This will destroy any credibility or trust you developed on the message board.
• Randomly posting on message boards just to have your signature box viewed. Make your posts sincere, it is much more professional.
• When posting on message boards make sure you have something of value to add. This will speed development of credibility to the viewers, making you an expert in your field.

How are discussion boards located? Simply go to Google to do a search. We will use network marketing for our example.Enter: network marketing + forums, into the Google search field. A list of message boards will come up which you can start to explore. Once you find some message boards you like, make sure you bookmark them.

Aspects to look for when choosing a message board:

• Take a look at how many members they have. Some message boards will not have this information available. If the member number is low, this might not be forum where you will get top quality discussion.
• What is the date of the last message posted. Also take a look at the views for each post. This gives you and idea how busy the discussion board might be.
• Email the owner of the forum or the moderators and ask the questions you want answered.
• Last but not least, does the discussion board have the information you are looking for? This would seem obvious, but you would be surprised how many people spend time on forums that are not informative. Be sure it has relevance and quality of information.

Another option is to start your own discussion board. This is more of an advanced strategy. Consider option if your website is receiving sufficient volumes of traffic and you have the time to dedicate to the discussion board.

The benefits of starting a message board:

• It is a great way to brand your name and your credibility.
• It brings constant traffic to your website. It may be repeat traffic, but if the topics are good and the discussions are informative it will generate new traffic.
• When trust is built you can offer an ezine subscription and monetize your offers to the people on the message board.
• You as the owner will become more knowledgeable in your business niche.

As you can see, there are many fantastic benefits to your website in having your own message board.

Here are five questions to ask, if considering whether a discussion board is right for you:

1. Do you know your business well enough to be seen as an expert? If you are not, could hire moderators who are. Some have done this. If money is no object then go for it. In message boards where the owner is an active participant, the content is typically much more informative. I have a hockey forum about leagues in and around my area. When I was very active on the boards and it grew in popularity each and every month. Click here for more moderator information

2. What is your goal with the message board? Is it to make money by promoting your product or services? Increase you subscribers to your ezine? Or just to increase your websites traffic? Share ideas? Your choice may influence the type of forum you have and the titles you place in the message board. For example, if you are a affiliate marketer you might want to have titles that target this area.

3. What titles do you think will generate the interest and traffic that you want? Currently, pod-casts, blogging, Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) and audio/video seem to be picking up steam. These are some topics to consider.

4. How do I generate traffic? Having a good number of visits to your website would be a great benefit. Another way, is to hire people to post. This can be costly, but worth it. Just make sure you trust your posters and monitor so they stay on topic. Posters can make the discussion more intriguing, and help to engage new message board members so they continue to come back. Here is more information on hiring message board posters.

5. What about spam? Yes that is right, Spam! Spam is everywhere even in forums. Many discussion boards are littered with useless posts promoting their deal of the week. How are you going to handle this?

The final decision, is what type of discussion board do you want to build. There are a number of choices to make, from free to paid. Click here to see a list of hosting companies. Make sure your web hosting company is aware of what you are doing. Get all the information needed to make sure they can host the discussion board and other technical aspects that are required. It is better to have the correct information right from the start, this will save huge headaches later.


Your Final Mission, If You Accept To Choose It:

1. Decide on 6 to 10 message boards that are the right fit for your niche. Remember to use Google to help find these forums.

2. Make good use of the signature box. Use the tips and tricks that are suggested.

3. Make a least one post every three days to your forums. Make sure you use the guide lines above to maximize results.

4. Last but not least, have fun and learn something along the way when you visit your most trusted discussion boards.

As you can see, discussion boards can have a huge upside. The above is just that a guide, I reccomend more research to make those final decisions.

I hope this has helped you grow your knowledge and given you more confidence in the positive aspects of forums. Remember the secret formula - Research, Knowledge and Persistence. Please feel free to contact us! Happy posting!