Help with Building and Marketing Your Web Site(s)
I'm a huge fan of forums or message boards. Forums can be found on just about any
subject you can think of: sports, travel, stamping, bull riding, politics,
renaissance artists, and on and on it goes. If you like something, rest assured
that you are not the only one. There are gaggles of people just wanting to talk
to others about what excites or interests them. It's a terrific way to be a part
of an online community of people who think as you do. Not only is it a fun thing
to be a part of, but a necessary and terrific way to promote your business.
There are thousands and thousands of message boards on the internet.
That's a lot of potential people who may be interested in your products
or services. It also serves as a quick and easy way to get a lot of
links pointing back at your site and can help get your pages spidered
faster by the search engines.
I use a free tool, Board Tracker to help monitor posts on over
25,000 forums.
You can set up a free account there and then set up alerts. You can
set it to alert you to any posts containing any keyword or phrases you
like. Some examples would be, your board nicknames, your domain names,
affiliate programs you work with, or whatever else you're interested
in.
When someone makes a post and one of your alert keywords is found,
you are emailed a link to the thread which you can follow and make a
post. So as not to be a blatant board spammer, it is recommended that
you register and make an introduction post on that board before
responding to the thread. When responding, you should make your post
helpful to the person in regards to answering any question they had
without spamming your site/program, you are relying on your signature
file here to draw their attention.
To make this task easier, I suggest utilizing Roboform. Roboform
makes it easy to handle all of your registering and logins.
Now, let's find some forums in which we can participate. Everyone
has some knowledge or interest in something. Perhaps it is cars,
interior design or something else. Whatever it is, you can be certain
there are forums for that particular niche.
You can use your favorite search engine and search for... forums
"message board"
or specifically for... car message boards interior design message
boards or search by the different types of forum software like... "powered
by PHPBB" "powered by vbulletin"
Before registering with any message boards I would suggest that you
setup a yahoo or gmail account just for this purpose. It would also be a
good idea to use this email for your boardtracker alerts as well.
Now you are ready to begin registering. I have created a new
identity in Roboform to handle the registration for me. This includes my
signature file as well. Before posting, make sure that you read the
board rules so you are able to comply with those.
Once registered, make your introduction post. Basically you are just
announcing your arrival and maybe saying a little something about
yourself (roboform can do that too!), be sure to set your introduction
thread to notify you of new posts so that you are able to respond as
others welcome you.
Some things to keep in mind...
Who is your target audience and where will you find them? Are stay
home moms likely to be found in Family & Parenting forums? Who is most
likely to be participating at a car forum? A pet owners forum? etc..
Once you've located your target audience, target your signature to
meet the needs of that audience. For example, if you were involved in a
Family & Parenting forum, a signature aimed towards the mom who would
like to earn money while being home for her children may be in order. If
it were a Car or Electronics forum, maybe a signature promoting Free
Satellite Dishes (these pay $50-$100 per install btw) would be more
appropriate. The idea is to determine what the needs of any particular
audience would be and finding a way to appeal to that.
Also, notice that the majority of forums offer a place for people to
place advertising, usually under a category labeled something like,
"opportunities", "recommendations", "spam allowed", etc.. Look for these
and make use of those as well. Each of those is a free targeted link to
your site or product.
Make sure that you are paying attention to your anchor text. Anchor
text, in case you don't know, is the actual text that is linked. Choose
good keywords for your anchor text that you would like to do well for in
the search engines. Never link text such as "click here".
The most important thing is to make this a part of your daily
schedule. Do it each and every day and shortly you will have thousands
of free advertising links all over the internet!
Disclaimer: I am in no way endorsing blatant spamming! The method
I've outlined above is more of a suggestion for yet another avenue of
free marketing that should be used in a responsible and productive
manner which will benefit the board owners, other board members as well
as yourself.
About the Author
Check out Bricktown Toms Work
At Home Directory and
Ebay Toolbox for the best work at home opportunities, free ebooks,
tools, etc..
Sounds good, huh? Talk about free advertising! It's also a great way to
gain some more knowledge from those in the know that have been around
longer than you and in turn, share your ideas with the people who are
starting out as you were at one time. Now, go find some great message
boards and don't forget that all important signature!
|
