How To Use Forums To Drive Traffic To Your Blog
December 8, 2007Who said forums are only good for getting help and advice?
There is often so much activity on certain forums that a normal forum-less website can only dream of.
While you can help other members and ask for help on the discussion forums, you can also tap into the abundant traffic of forums and drive it back to your blog.
Following are a few ways to get other forum members to notice you and visit your site at least once.
Start an argument with another member
And by this, I don’t mean you start a nasty kind of argument. Just a normal debate between you and another member where you quote each other and try to disprove your opponents’ claim or point of view.
When a debate starts in a particular thread between two members, other members usually don’t interfere. But this doesn’t mean they are not reading. They silently read the debate and derive their own conclusions.
If you wisely pick a weaker opponent to debate with, or you simply have more knowledge than your opponent to easily win the argument, you’ll get a lot of people clicking on your signature link, eager to read more of your thoughts on the subject.
Become an active member in a sub-forum
Pick a certain sub-forum (a forum category) that relates to your blog, and actively participate in all its discussions. Be the first one to solve a problem in a new thread. Always be eager to offer help and advice to fellow members. And Be welcoming to the new members.
This will definitely get other members to appreciate your help and altruism and have them wanting to know more about you on your blog.
Become a moderator
All right, you can’t really become a moderator at will, but if you try hard enough, why not?
Although becoming a moderator requires a lot more commitment and active participation in all the forums on your part, if you manage to pull it off on a fairly busy forum, the effort is worth it.
When you become a moderator, you are instantly promoted from being just another member with worthless opinion to a position of authority, where you are seen to have an authentic and well-researched opinion on all matters.
So, when a forum member clicks on your blog link, he already sees you as authority on a particular subject, which is the hardest part of converting a casual visitor to your site into a regular reader.
Therefore, by becoming a moderator, you not only draw more attention to yourself (and your signature) but you also get visitors who are already inclined to become your readers.
Optimize your signature
Do you have a signature link that says “My blog”? Os is it simply “yourblog.com” or some such anchor text?
Having a well-written link anchor text in your signature is essential if you want others to notice the link. If you did everything else right but have a poorly described link anchor text, you simply wasted your time.
The best way to describe a link is to put it in the form of title and a sub-title.
Example: Life with Church: Do you know you can drastically improve your life with the help of church?
Above is much better and appealing than a simple “Life with church” or “lifewithchurch.com” (only for example. I don’t know if such a site exists).
Drop your links in the posts
Not in a spammy way. Because if you drop links without establishing yourself as an active and helpful member first, you’ll be ignored, suspended, or banned. So don’t even think about spamming.
But if you want to help a member out and have already a post on your blog related to the member’s query, feel free to refer him to your blog.
If you are already seen as an authority member on the forum, no one would object to your occasional link dropping.
I have been a member of numerous forums for many years and have found the above methods to be quite useful. I have even gotten hundreds of visitors to my web sites through a single post on big forums such as Neowin and Sitepoint.
Your thoughts?
Do you use forums? And have you had any success with driving forum traffic to your site/blog?
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I am on Digital Point but I am not really into driving the traffic to my blog there. It’s a noisy forum filled with various types of online money maker wannabes.
I shared what I know to other forumers and sometimes I laughed over their acts there. I do promote and made some money from DP and I guess I will be signing up to SitePoint very soon with the holidays creeping in (meaning lots of time to spare).
After a look at SitePoint’s FAQ, affiliate links are not allowed in the signature. Thus, I will be promoting my blog there then. I am sure that your tips can get me good results.
Nice!
If the blog encourages visitors and commentators to really be part of the forum, it can work. If as Wayne has pointed out, if there is only a lot of noise and the center of attraction is the blog owner, the site eventually will collapse with its own weight. On the other hand, caring and nurturing sites with a lot of genuine interaction with the members tend to grow, albeit less noisily and at a slower pace.
I think really the best two things you can do are just participate as much and as genuinely as you can and help people as much as you can. Unfortunately, I don’t have as much time as I would like!
Waynne, yeah, Digital Point has been going downhill over the past couple of years. SitePoint is much better quality wise. Their moderation system is also very good. Spam/ads are deleted instantly so the normal threads don’t get buried amid spam.
In past, I also managed to win some logo design contests in Sitepoint’s marketplace.
Michael, yeah I must admit I too don’t participate in forum discussions anymore. But a couple of years ago, I had some very ‘authority’ accounts at a couple of forums. And I did learn quite a bit about how to get traffic using different methods.
Even though there are better ways to get traffic for a blog/site that require less effort, posting on relevant forums is essential for new bloggers who struggle to find readers for their blog.
Mohsin,
This is a great article. I really love using forums for blog promotion. Additionally, they are great for learning.
As a forum owner and administrator I agree with everything you’ve said here. I also think that if you’re a regular visitor you can get away with being a little spammier than new people.
Really, I’m grateful that people take the time to visit and participate in our forums – the least I can do is return the favour by letting you post your links around a little bit. Just be careful never to go overboard or appear too spammy.
Another idea would be to start discussions. Post new topics with interesting questions – especially stuff that might go on for a long time. A lot of people will read the first few posts but won’t bother reading the whole thing if it’s a long thread. You have the benefit of being the first, with your link there. If you do this a lot you get to be known as someone who has interesting ideas.
Every forum admin has different levels of tolerance for this sort of thing. I know some forums that have a strict no linking to your own site policy. Another suggestion would be to get to know how strict the forum admins are. If you know where they stand you can push the edge a bit without ticking anyone off.
By the way, I like the way you approached this topic. A lot of people will talk about posting in forums to get one-way backlinks, which is really pointless because SE’s know what a signature link looks like and don’t count them for much. We’ve had to install some signature restrictions to discourage people from writing pointless junk just to get their signature up.
Of course, there are a lot of other benefits to posting in forums other than just getting traffic!
Good tips! I will have to get back into forums – I certainly get a significant amount of my traffic from the Pixelpost forum. So I agree, they’re a good source.
I am active in a few forums, but I do not join those forums with the intention of driving traffic to my blogs. I joined those forums to learn new things, as well as to share my knowledge
I know how it feels to want to learn something but everybody’s speaking jargons instead of English. So in forums, I try to explain things in such that a 7-yea-old would understand
Fred, forums are also great for learning, there is no doubt about that.
Megan, well said! Thread starters always get more attention than the rest of the members.
The reason why so many people flock the forums is that they need help. And the community intelligence on the forums helps eveyone solve their problems. So it’s a win-win situation for everyone.
kristarella, thanks!
Pelf, I too don’t join forums just to attract traffic to my sites, but while we are on the forums sharing and receiving knowledge, why not take this opportunity market our blogs too?
Great post Kat.
I am really beginning to see the usefulness the camaraderie that forums offer. You are an example of quality people that can be found in forums.
It’s not only useful to increase traffic, but also as a means to increase awareness that is always needed, no matter who you are or what you are trying to accomplish.
Thanks!
Forums have always been used as a marketing tool, mostly used for networking with other members. Although you need to establish yourself as a maven before they actually listen to you.
Teejay: I haven’t found that to be the case. Some of us are not mavens at all. Some of us are constantly trying to improve who we are, who we know, and what we are about. There is always someone listening. If it’s not who you want it to be, then maybe that’s their imperfections, not yours. There’s alot more peace of mind in going into forums with an attitude that is centered on what can be learned to better yourself. the rest will fall into place.
As a long time forums owner, I do agree with most of your points. The sig link thang can and is abused to the ninth degree and is exactly why many forums out there won’t allow sig links anymore. Many more don’t allow the posting of links in comments either unless you are an established and “helpful” member. There are too many wannabe successful owners out there who love to abuse the system. IE: Digitalpoint….. disgusting actually.
I also just noticed you are selling advertising to text link ads. Why?
Mohsin, I’ve done and do most everything you describe in this thread and I’ll back you up that it works. Mostly you just need to be a contributing member and continue to add value to the forum and other members of the forum.
You can’t always guarantee becoming a moderator, but if you consistently contribute and are a good forum citizen you have a good chance. It can also help if you report spam and get to know some of the current moderators. One thing it’s best not to do is contact a moderator and ask if you can become one.
The best part about forum traffic is tends to be pretty good traffic. A great deal of my subscribers first visited through a sig link on a forum. Generally people are already sold on you before they visit your site.
Doug Heil, regarding TLA, do you think it’s unethical or something?
Mohsin, Google has been penalizing sites with text link ads by dropping their PageRank. Google feels it’s unethical.
This thing isn’t making me any money anyway, so I guess it’s a good time to stop promoting TLA.
Man i wish i came across this blog sooner. It would have helped me from being banned and disrespected on so many forums. hahahah
Just have a question. So your saying that you shouldnt really post any sort of links to your website, until your more of a respected member in the community? So building traffic from forums, is more like a longer term strategy? as im writing this .. the answer is becoming more obvious though ….
HAF, I’d regard it as a long-term strategy that starts working as soon as you start implementing it. The traffic only grows as you make more contributions and make yourself a valuable member of the community.
yes.
in fact, i have couple of profile page with PR > 2 and of course i put my site url in my signature and my homepage input at my forum profile just to get some more juice..
hi,
I’m blogging a flash game blog, however I found too hard for me to attract traffic to my blog. the reason there are not much sub forum is about flash game or online game.
or anyone can help with tell me some of the forums??
thanks a lot
Hi, I just wanted to introduce myself! Hope I can be of help here!
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Definately a long – term strategy m but worth it. Obviously time is an issue , the way I’ve
got around not having enough time – as I’m spending working on
http://www.ITjobfeed.com, is to pick forums , where I am also learning continiously,
so I get the double benefit
Hi,
I never really thought forums were that good for driving traffic just from the fact that I rarely clicked on people’s signature links but after becoming fairly active in one forum I suddenly started to get lots of traffic to my blog. So this is great advice.
I have found a very profitable centre- here it is https://valary.com , where you can merge your traffic! I do it for several months and like it!- high bids, monitoring, statistics, payment at the right time, don’t shave. I do really think i would become richer!!!!
I’m the administrator of Bloggertalk.net & I can’t stress how important it is to be an active participant. I find many people sign up – drop their link and leave. Your article was very informative.
yes….I like to join the forum and give comment…especially do follow blog…start to create free traffic….thanks
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Forums do generate a lot of traffic. If you are an informative poster, other forum members will want to hear more of what you have to say, and hence check out your website. Especially if the main forum topics are closely related to the topic of your blog.
thanks…digital points very good forum
how strong and how much will get free traffic when active in forum? thanks
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I realy think you can drive traffic to blogs with forums.I’ve don it some time ago but i was trying to be too fast.Now i know the tactics of using forum to drive traffic to your blog.Presently now am blogging and am trying to build audience to my forum.All the informations above are very useful including the coments.Thanks to all that post.
I am an active member of Web Hosting Talk forum, and I really dont know how forums can add traffic to our site, but, it is a great feeling to post something meaningful there, and then someone will respond to you that you have a great idea and that it was a good reply.
Anyway, I said I really dont know how forums worked but, when I read this article, its a great help actually. Now, Im thinking about signing up to another forum, to build a network. Thanks..
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I have not been a member of any forums thus far but I keep hearing again and again that it’s a good way to get traffic to your site so I think it might be time for me to give it a shot. I keep hearing about sitepoint. Would that be a good forum to start with?
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Yeah! You’re right! Forums can drive traffic to your blogs. If you posted on a comment on a forum and users sees your comment interesting and valuable then they will probably follow your link. Just provide that link on each post. I written some DoFollow forums that is a must see and try by you. Check it here: http://www.internetbusinesspath.com/tag/business-forums
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