Often, when you think of your blog traffic strategy, you think of guest posting, blog commenting or SEO. Perhaps some of you might even think of video marketing if you are into youtube, or perhaps like Ms. Ileane (and myself lately…) you might think about your podcasting as a traffic source.
However, for over a year and a half, NONE of these was my primary source of traffic, leads, or sales for my blog. In fact, my biggest blog traffic strategy is one that many people fail to even consider:
Forum Marketing!
I started using forums early on in my career. In fact, the whole reason I started IMRelations was because I wanted a place to centralize the forums I was already using.
(Did you know that forums are one of the oldest forms of social media still in use today?)
At the time, I was just starting out in affiliate marketing, and I was active in about a dozen IM forums, mainly learning from other people, and networking with people.
So, I started up a blog to share my experiences. I never really expected it to take off. In fact, for over a year and a half, ALL my links were coming from forums and a few blog comments. I wasn't really trying to make money on that blog, it was just a place for me to hang out and talk about marketing.
I really didn't even care if anyone was listening.
But, because of what I was doing in the forums, it did take off, and (surprisingly to me…) people were listening.
Why Forums Can Be Your Best Blog Traffic Strategy
Yet, as I go around, most people are telling me that forum marketing doesn't work as a blog traffic strategy, or that it is too labor intensive. The funny thing is, these are also people who are heavy into social media, which is a lot more labor intensive than forum marketing is.
In fact, this blog traffic strategy was so successful for me that many people started coming to me and asking me how I did it. Now, like any good affiliate marketer, my first reaction was to go out looking to see if I could find a product to promote….
NOPE!!!
No luck there. Most of the guides I could find were about profile linking, spamming threads for links, and other terrible advice. They were killing people's reputations without them even realizing it. That doesn't really work for a good blog traffic strategy, so I had to keep looking. I never did find one though. Instead, I went to work showing how to use forums as a traffic strategy and brand building tool.
I created my own blog traffic strategy guide using forum marketing!
Now, I didn't just run right out and write an ebook for the fun of it. In fact, several people had to BEG me to do it. I never really wanted to get into products. I am an Affiliate after all!
So, recently I finished up my Forum Traffic Sweeper guide, where I shared all my forum marketing tips and tricks to generating leads, sales, and most importantly authority through using niche forums.
Today, I thought I would share a little trick with you guys that I learned along the way.
How To Get Better Results From Forum Signature Links
A few months ago, I did a post over here about using landing pages for your guest posting bio box. I got a lot of great reviews and comment on the post, but most people don't know that I actually learned how to that particular blog traffic strategy through forum marketing.
You see, in forums, you get a “one size fits all” link in your signature file. This means you really can't target that link to a specific problem really easily. After all, today, I might be answering questions on SEO, while tomorrow, I am answering questions on plugins for WordPress.
So, instead, I started testing landing pages. In these landing pages, I would talk about my experience within the forum, talk about the forum owner's products if they have any, and invite people to my email list.
I found by doing this that it increased my engagement and even improved my opt-in conversions by 75%.
So, if you want to get the most out of your forum signature, use a landing page, instead of just a random page on your blog. You will get better results, and you can target the landing pages to the people specifically coming to you through that one forum. This could be the best blog traffic strategy that you implement, as long as you don't fall down the dark path and become another forum spammer.