You’ve created your home based business website online and you’ve decided which products you’re going to promote and now you’re focus is on developing your Internet marketing strategy. One Internet marketing technique you should seriously consider is forum marketing. First of all what are forums and consequently what is forum marketing?
According to wikipedia: “An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are not shown in real-time, to see new messages the forum page must be reloaded. Also, depending on the access level of a user and/or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes visible.”
Forum marketing is the process of using these discussion sites to promote your home based business and your merchandise by joining and posting messages to these message boards. Forum marketing is a popular Internet marketing tactic because of the popularity of these discussion websites and the potential audience you can reach. There are 5 major benefits of using forums to promote your home business including:
1. Posting to forums on a regular basis provides the opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in your particular marketing niche. For example, if your home business theme is Internet marketing and your niche is driving traffic you can target specific discussions in Internet marketing forums related to traffic generation and display your expertise by addressing different topics which are being discussed or start a discussion yourself. When you provide quality content on a regular basis your reputation within these forums will grow and people will begin to view you as an authority in your field.
2. You can create back links to your home business site by adding your link to your profile as well as your signature file. As a result every time you post a comment to these various discussion sites you will be leaving a link to your home page so people can check out your business and your merchandise.
3. The more forums you post to the more back links you will create and the more traffic you will generate to your home business website. By gaining the trust and respect of other members and by participating by adding quality content on a regular basis you will soon see the fruits of your labor in the form of increased traffic and as a result more paying customers for your enterprise. Some of these new visitors will also come from the major search engines online as they find relevant links to your website on the many forums you participate in.
4. As a result of the previous three advantages both you and your home business will become recognized online as a trusted and respected entity to do business with and forum members may begin approaching you for answers to some particular Internet marketing problem they may be having. This will also go a long way toward increasing traffic to your website and help to build your email list of potential customers on the web.
5. This increased recognition brings with it the potential for relationship building online which in and of itself can provide major benefits for your enterprise. By creating friendships with other Internet marketers you create the opportunity to establish joint ventures and other cooperative business ventures on the web. This will again increase your website traffic as well as your sales and help add to your email list
Forum marketing is one of many Internet marketing strategies you can add to your arsenal to create a formidable home business presence on the web and help you build a lucrative income for many years to come.