How Online Marketing Forums Can Help Your Online Business Today

An online marketing forum can be your doorway to a successful internet marketing business. 

If used properly, forums can be a powerful tool for finding helpful information, connecting with both potential customers and other internet marketers, and establishing a solid reputation.

All of this is extremely important when it comes to growing your online business.  But forums will only be an advantage if you understand how they work and approach them properly. 

Here are some guidelines to help you get started.

What Exactly Is A Forum?

Forums are simply websites where a group of people with a common interest come together to talk and share ideas.  It’s like the internet version of gathering around the water cooler or at the local coffee shop.

An online marketing forum is a particular type of forum where the focus is on strategies and techniques for marketing a business online.  It’s a place where you can go if you want to market your business and you need a little help getting started.

How to Find the Right Forum

There are many marketing forums out there and some are better than others.  If you’re looking for advice and direction, then you need to make sure that you find a forum where you feel comfortable. 

Some of the more established online marketing forums, such as Wicked Fire, and Digital Point, have been around for a long time and have a large group of knowledgeable helpful members.  They are a good starting point.

If none of these appeal to you, check out the online marketing forum I use.

You’ve Found a Forum…Now What?

Once you find a forum, you need to look around before you actually start participating.  Become familiar with the kind of information offered there, the tone of the conversations, and any rules the particular forum may have. 

The whole idea of participating in an online marketing forum is to help increase the audience for your online business so you need to make sure you are in sync with the members of any forum that you join.

What Not To Do

The worst thing you can do when it comes to joining an online marketing forum is moving too fast too soon. 

The people who participate in these forums are business savvy and they will be leery of anyone who comes on too strong out of the gate. In other words, avoid trying to sell anything when you first become a member.

It makes you look like a spammer…someone who is only using the forum to sell something or promote his or her website, and doesn’t really care about helping anyone else. And spammers are always frowned upon.

I remember when I joined my first online marketing forum. It was disastrous! After only about 5 minutes of becoming a member, I posted a message with a link to an affiliate product I was promoting.

The moderator quickly removed the link and responded to my post by saying something like, “links already?”

That was a very friendly warning to stop posting links and contribute some helpful information first. But being the argumentative law student that I was, I shot back.

I asked him if he had made a mistake in removing my link and if he could put it back as quickly as possible.

Needless to say, we had a brief exchange of regrettable words. A few forum members joined in the argument…against me, and my reputation on that forum was ruined. I had to quit using it.

The only fortunate thing is that I was using a wierd combination of letters and numbers as my user name.

But that’s what can happen if you start posting promotional links immediately you join a forum.

It doesn’t matter if they are links to your website or other websites you promote. Get to know the forum first and make some none promotional posts.

Making a Good First Impression

So how exactly can you make a good first impression? Or perhaps, the better question is how can you avoid making a bad first impression?

Well, the best way is to start by reading the forum rules so you know exactly how to behave on that forum.

Once you know the rules, all you need to do is follow them and you will avoid causing any unnecessary problems for yourself. You may make mistakes sometimes and that’s ok.

Most forum moderators are very reasonable. Everything will work out well as long as you try your best to follow the rules.

Building Your Forum Presence

Now that you’re participating in a forum on a regular basis, you can begin to spread your wings a little and put your marketing strategy into practice. But that doesn’t mean cluttering up all of your posts with sales pitches.

Rather, it means establishing yourself as a potential source of information so that you become a valued member of the forum. It’s a give and take relationship.

If you’ve gleaned useful information from other participants, it’s only right that you should give back as well.

Besides, it’s only when you start to share what you know that you will build your reputation as an authority in your niche.

And the beautiful thing about an online marketing forum is that after you have made the required amount of posts, you are allowed to include a link to your website or any other site under every post. That link is called a signature file.

And it can work wonders for your online business because people who find your posts helpful may want to know more about you and click on your signature file.

Personally, I suggest that you include a link to your squeeze page so that you can build a list of qualified prospects. That will help you gain far much more from your forum marketing efforts.

So that’s all there is to an online marketing forum in a nutshell. They are not difficult to profit from once you get them.

Indeed it’s true that the internet offers a wonderful opportunity to reach out in ways that were never before possible.  Now, through the use of an online forum, you can literally reach people around the globe simply by posting helpful information to one website.

That’s undeniably a Marvelous thing indeed!

To Your Success

Bruce