Hello To All Of You JohnChow Fans! My name is Shannon Lilly and I run a Webmaster Forum that was recently reviewed by John Chow dot Com.
The review was excellent and made some great points, however the original review quoted a few stats inaccurately. We contacted John about this and he graciously offered us this guest post in return. The review stated we had 3,000 posts but we actually have over 21,000 posts by over 2,600 members in our forum. The review also stated that we had no Marketplace but we actually have it hidden to unregistered members.
I am thankful to John for allowing me to clear the air when it comes to our webmaster Forum. I am very passionate about my forum as John is with his blog. John and I decided to include some of my techniques in the area of “Forum Marketing” and the different ways it can be approached. I hope you can use some of what I have learned and build upon it for your own success.
Using Signature Links To Your Advantage
Signature links are one of the best ways I have found for marketing a website on a specific niche. Im not talking about buying signatures on forums (although that can work sometimes) I am referring to your own signature on a niche specific forum.
Ok let’s start at the beginning; you have a forum about Gardening. You know that your gardening forum has great info and you believe other gardeners will like what you’re offering, right? But how do you get the word out about it without spending too much money? This is where signature links come in, spend some time going through what you consider “Top Notch” gardening forums. Join them and start posting daily, offering free tips and advice. Nearly every forum (check before you sign up) offers signature links as a way for you to promote your own websites of that niche. Take advantage of that and post a signature containing a small description and a link to your forum about gardening.
Knowing what to say with your signature and how to say it can be a bit difficult. I have written about this very subject on my blog before. You’re welcome to check that article out and be sure to subscribe to my blog if you like what you read! Signatures have increased my traffic and click through upwards of 500% which is pretty good considering I am in a flooded niche.
Commenting For Extra Traffic and Signups?
Blog commenting is another great way to generate traffic to your forum or blog. By commenting on a blog in your niche you can provide helpful tips to a post by the blogger. It is possible to get 100’s if not many more visitors to your forum/website from each comment you make. Specifically, comment on blogs that get high traffic in your niche, find blogs that have thousands of rss subscribers or members and comment on these daily.
If you are one of the first or top blog commenter’s you should see significant traffic from each comment/blog. I have had traffic increases upwards of 750% when I actively blog comment on a regular basis. Just remember, when commenting what you say is how your website is reflected to the public. If you have poor grammar and spelling mistakes in your responses other readers will tend to skip past your comments and not give your site a second look. If your comments are of good length and stand out from the rest you should get clicks. Blog commenting success is greatly dependent on how well you do in your comments so take your time and respond carefully with good grammar and spelling!
Connect With Similar Sites
A commonly overlooked marketing technique is the power of “word of mouth”. One of the easiest ways I have found to accomplish word of mouth over the net is by connecting with similar sites. Learn to work out ways for linking up on other sites similar to yours. You will be doing yourself a favor by getting and giving good quality links. Not only will you get link juice and traffic from a recip link from other forums and blogs of your niche but you will also receive valuable contacts that you will need later down the road for continued growth.
Think of these similar websites as a pond with lots of fish in them, by placing your hook (website) into the pond you will hook some fish. These hooked fish will become members of your site; if you can connect with many of these niched websites you will be hooking visitors and traffic.
Don’t underestimate the smaller sized sites either, while trying to linkup with the big bloggers or forums is great, your response will be much better if you attempt to hook up with medium to small sized blogs and websites. You can get a much larger % of linkups and in turn generate more traffic and signups.
When you do these recip link trades, do not link out of your homepage. Instead create a page on your forums blog or in the forum itself called resources/friends list. Add a nice description 200+ words for each link and you should not be penalized by the search engines.
Remember, connections are everything on the internet, surprisingly people want to hook up more then you would think. Take advantage of that and email everyone you can, asking for a link trade. “You Do Not Have Because You Do Not Ask…”
There are many other ways to get traffic to your forum. Be sure to read our forum and signup today to start asking questions on how to promote your own forum, blog or website to the worldwideweb audience!