Forum Marketing - What You Ought To Know

Forum marketing can be a very effective (and free) technique to generate leads for your business. Although, there are several things to keep in mind.

As with any free marketing strategy, the compromise is you are investing your time instead of your money, so be sure to follow these 8 suggestions so you can be sure you are spending that time wisely and efficiently!

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 begin pitching your opportunity. Instead, join the discussion and share some expertise when appropriate.

You're joining the forum to meet other people, make relationships, learn, share information and help each other out. As time goes on and you provide helpful knowlege and advice to the members of the forum, they will start to identify you as a leader. It's important to remember, people join people and they are looking for leaders!

2. All links belong in your signature. Regardless if it's for an affiliate offer or your primary opportunity, links go in your signature. That's why it's there in the first place! The only exception is when you are giving a link to information or a helpful website, not affiliate offers or capture pages though.

Provide value and add to the dialogue in your forum posts. Become a leader and the community will become interested in you, which is when they will look to your signature to learn more about you.

3. Don't misuse your signature by placing links to generic company websites and landing pages. You've taken the time to form 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 important to send them somewhere that you can form a stronger relationship with them. A place where you can provide them with more value, such as a blog, for example. It's important you have an opt-in form on your blog so they can join your mailing list while they are there.

many forums have room to put a couple of links, so one can certainly be to your own personally branded website/landing page. As an example, if you are involved with a generic lead generation system like MyLeadSystemPro, which can help other network marketers build their business...that would be a good place to send them!

4. Don't be a know-it-all. It's essential to be self-confident and exhibit leadership, but be respectful of other people and be mindful to not act like you know absolutely everything, because nobody likes that!!

5. Don't be afraid to join a forum on a topic other than internet 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 ten different forums all at once because that won't accomplish anything. It's much more valuable to choose 1-3, depending on how much time you have to devote to your marketing. You're better off being more involved on fewer forums than less involved on more forums.

Once you join, get involved. Don't just sit back and watch over the discussion! Be prepared to allocate 3-6 days a week, especially in the beginning. Be careful though, and set a specific 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. Keep in mind that this technique is effective, but you have to 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 without a doubt your time.

8. Make sure to get involved on forums that get a lot of visitors. Use sites such as Alexa.com to help you with determining some active forums to join. 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! As with any other marketing strategy, stay with it and be consistent. It won't happen overnight, but forum marketing can be a great place to get leads for your business. It can also be a good place to learn some new things, so don't forget to do that while you're there!