Forum Marketing - What You Should Know

Forum marketing can be a very effective (and free) technique to generate leads for your business. However, it's important to keep a few things in mind.

Any time you utilize a free marketing strategy, it's important to remember you are investing your time instead of your money, so these following tips will help you spend that time wisely!

8 Do's And Don'ts Of Forum Marketing:

1. Nobody cares about your business. The very last thing you want to do is join a forum and then start pitching your opportunity. Instead, join the conversation and share some expertise when appropriate.

The reason for joining the forum is to meet other people, to develop relationships and share information to help each other out. As time goes on and you offer worthwhile knowlege and guidance to the members of the forum, they will begin to identify you as a leader. It's important to remember, people join people and they are searching for leaders!

2. All links belong in your signature. It doesn't matter if it's for an affiliate offer or your primary opportunity, links belong in your signature. That's why it's there in the first place! The only exception is when you are sharing a link to information or a beneficial website, not affiliate offers or landing pages though.

Provide value and get involved in the conversations on the forums. Develop into a leader and the community will become interested in you, which is when they will go to your signature to learn more about you.

3. Do not put links to generic company websites/capture pages in your signature. You've taken the time to build good relationships with the community and offered them valuable advice and information. The last thing you want to do is turn them away by sending them to a generic company site or capture page.

Leaders have their own branded websites, so be that leader. It's vital to send them somewhere that you can develop a better relationship with them. A place where you can provide them with more value, such as a blog, for example. It's important, however, that you have an opt-in form on your blog so they can join your mailing list while they are there.

many forums have space to put a couple of links, so one can definitely be to your own personally branded website/capture page. If you are using a generic lead generation system such as MyLeadSystemPro, which can help other network marketers to build their own business, that would be a terrific place to send them!

4. Don't be a know-it-all. It's important to be confident and show leadership, but be considerate of other people and be mindful to not act like you know absolutely everything, because no one likes that!!

5. Don't be afraid to join a forum on a focus other than network marketing. For example, if you're really into golf, it's okay to join a golf forum and use your signature to say something like "Earning money online yet? I can show you how."

6. Be consistent. Don't go joining eight different forums all at once because that won't accomplish anything. It's much more effective to choose 1-3, depending on how much time you have to dedicate to your marketing. You're better off being more involved on fewer forums than less involved on more forums.

Once you've joined and set up your profile, then go get involved. Don't just sit back and watch the conversation! You should expect to allocate 3-6 days a week, especially in the beginning. Be careful though, and set a certain amount of time that you can afford to spend on each forum so time doesn't just slip away!!

7. Be patient. It's not reasonable to expect that you can join a few forums and then have hundreds of leads the next week. Forum marketing can be very effective, but you must be patient. It does take time, but it's important to have patience and stick with it in order for it to yield results. As always, you are either spending time or money. With forum marketing, it's definitely your time.

8. Make sure to get involved on forums that get a lot of visitors. Sites like Alexa.com can be beneficial in finding out how much traffic a website is getting. Here are three examples of good forums for the network marketing niche:

Warrior Forum
Better Networker
Rich Dad

It looks like it's time to wrap things up! Keep in mind, with any marketing technique, stick with it and stay consistent. It won't happen overnight, but forum marketing can be a great place to obtain leads for your business. It can also be a wonderful place to learn some new things, so don't forget to do that while you're there!