Forum Marketing
There are countless Forums online these days for all possible niches. (And if you can’t find one in your niche, Eureka! You’ve hit the jackpot! Start the first forum there and it’s like inheriting an oil well.) Identifying all the popular forums on your market or niche is a very important thing that all marketers should do for any online marketing campaign. For the really big, active forums with over 500,000 posts, simply go search for them by your keywords at http://www.big-boards.com.
Finding smaller forums is a little more tricky. Since there are many different software packages that forums are based on, there is no one good search command to find them all, except for adding the word “forum” to your search query. Try googleing each of your top five keyword phrases, in quotes, with the word forum slapped on the end, outside of the quotes.
Once you’ve found them, the big question becomes how you market to them without becoming a “spammer.” You will rarely find a forum, unless it’s strictly a “marketers’ forum” that allows you to post a blatent ad inside of them without it being deleted. What you’ve got to do is network a little. Answer any questions you have the answer to first to build up a presence for yourself.
However, what you are really looking for on a forum is a question that someone else asks that leaves room for you to answer, with your business being part of the solution.
So if you sell sprockets, and you find a great engineering forum, starting a new thread about your great sprockets or even offering information about how a great new sprocket line could solve many of their engineering problems will quickly be deleted, and it might even get your whole account booted! On the other hand, if you take a somewhat passive role on ALL the Engineering forums, and wait for someone to ask about a sprocket-related issue, you’ll be the hero, not a spammer, for offering your educated advice.
The moral of this story is to only market on forums when it’s part of a solution to someone else’s question. In those situations, you can market as much as you want, and the outcome is a lasting link to your website tied to both name recognition & expertise.