Have you used Forum Marketing to promote your blog?
We always talk about building community around our blogs which can engage and aid lot of useful thoughts in the posts. An engaging community can add a lot more than just comments, they can give feedback, suggestions or they can even contribute.
One of the good ways to build community is engaging your readers with the help of forum marketing. You can establish a forum for your readers on your blog.
The first dilemma is to either wait till you have a community on the blog and then starts a forum or should we go ahead and start it right away.
Do you wait for an engaging community, before opening the blog?
You know where I am going with this. Yes, I am in favor of opening it right away.
We can open a forum and promote it to create a community. You can use the community you have on your blog, or you can build a community on your forum which can later be diverted to your blog.
Forum Software
Once you decide to open a forum, the first question is which software you will use for your forums.
There are some free softwares like SMF, PHPBB or Mybb forums or paid softwares like VBForums, IP Board etc available for forum creations.
In case of forums the free softwares are really good. SMF and PHPBB are two very good options for the forum creation which are on par with each other.
The only difference I found is that in PHPBB you need some knowledge of coding to add mods, it is not an automatic process and require manual updates of PHP files. In SMF mod installation and updates can be done from admin panel, you might require some manual work depending on how many mods you install.
Both platforms have some good free themes to make it look attractive and many other useful mods to make it work.
Paid software's are good but I found them bit costly for the starters though they provides many options out of box like SEO and many other customizations.
SEO Options for Your Forum
One most annoying thing with the free forum softwares is that they are not SEO friendly out of box. There can be duplicate content as same content can be accessed via different URL’s, or the forum URL’s are not descriptive.
There is some work involved when you install the forum software, to make them SEO friendly. Benefit of doing that is huge, as it can get you additional visitor from search engines.
Descriptive URL's for forums are always a point of discussion, many people believe that they do not add anything in SEO and other says it does. You can decide which group you want to follow but they do add a value to the users. They provide an understanding about the topic to the users.
With the help of mods like pretty url's and some manual work you can make them look SEO friendly.
One other thing which you might want to do is setup RSS feed for your forums. This makes it easy to promote your forum in commentluv way, you will be able to create links to forum topics with the help of your RSS feed.
Spam Preventation
Spam is a big thing with the forums, lot of false accounts, garbage posts etc. There are few software which make life little easy, but be prepare to see something which you might not have seen in blogging platforms.
Here are the basic steps which you should take to fight spam:
- Ask readers to answer captcha or some random questions in order to create account. It's a one time activity so it should be fine with the users.
- You can request email verification before activating the account, so that spammers need to do one extra step.
- You can activate the account manually. It can be a good choice for the product support forum. Only people who have purchased the product can have an access to it.
Whatever you do, it is going to be a good fight.
Hi Sanjeev,
Very interesting and informative post with good tips and advice. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Thanks Sonia, Hope it would have helped.
Nice post Sanjeev,
I’ve worked with both SMF and PHPBB and they are both excellent, If you have a little bit of knowledge about databases and how they work then installing either one of these service will be easy, they have too many options which gives you total freedom over your board.
Nice share. đŸ™‚
I guess both can be tailored to fit any need, has many mods available. Littlt bit of knowledge of database and coding can give total freedom.
Well the tips and advises you have shared regarding to the forum marketing is very useful, I have tried some of these , but to be honest basing on my own experience it is so hard to gain reputation in one site. we should avoid adding links in our profile if we are not qualified in that site.
ohh absolutely, we should avoid links in signature until we qualify for them. Some forums have specific rules for that and we should follow these too.
Yes you are right , we must follow some rules regarding to some forum sites, sometimes they are very strict specially in links. we must avoid it for instance. thanks for the reply.
I think main problem of forum is spamming, everybody can join forum and forum admin provide easily singular link,not single more than 3-4 links.
Yes Spam is one of the big things in Forums though you can remove bots by some techniques like adding small math questions in registration forms, but still manual spamming is there.
I haven’t joined the forum and your forum probably forgot an Imporant Guildline to to use Forum. For instance people might swearing each other, publishes adult content…
I’ve not up to the forum yet and there are tons of problem on my blog that I gotta fix as well.
I have those things in the forum rules but I agree keeping a tap on all of these is a tough task.
vBulletin is have very advanced options then PHPBB ,SMF , but its not free to use itrs starting from 200$ đŸ˜‰
Sai, I would not say advanced but it does take care of lot of modifications which we need to do in SMF and PHPBB3 to make it compatible. After some modification we can match the features.
A forum would be a nice addition my site because it would allow my readership to engage with one another, but my traffic is way too low to even consider creating a forum.
Hi Sanjeev,
Starting out a forum is great but it does require a fair amount of effort to put in to attract people to engage in the forum. Once the community become larger and there are more active members, it will be easier to minimize spam in the forum with the help by all the members. Usually, people are willing to contribute to the forum when they engage so it will be handy for them to report spam so that the admin can clear that out…
Hi Ming, Yes it does require a lot of effort to promote and maintain forums. To build a community and keeping them engage on the forums, Let’s see how it comes out for Makewebworld forums.
you shared something new about forums with me. I acquired some special information about forums through here. thanks for sharing.
I was unaware of Forum Marketing, so I totally appreciate you expanding my knowledge base. I’m going to check this out to grow my community.
I have no plants to start a forum myself, but you give lots of great options should I go that route. For the time being, contributing to forums in my niche will have to suffice.
participating in any forums is also a great way to get exposure. Best of luck if you decide to open one.
Well done. I am going to join this forum and good luck with your forum.
Thanks Amrik, You are more then welcome to become a part of the community.
Ya, Spam is one of the big things in the forums though there are methods to fight against it but we do require community effort towards it.
The bigger community we can build better it is but it does takes a lot of effort to build that.
I have been using forum to market my products and services. However, I’m seeing a few do-follow forums related to health. Unlike SEO and marketing forums, health forums have this specific rule: no links even after posting 100 post without links. It’s sad how these people treat inclusion of links in the signature ‘spamming’. I mean when someone is spamming, can he or she give like 30 relevant comments to a thread posted? Then when you tried to include 1 link on your 31st first they decide to kick you out for spamming? That’s really absurd. Anyways, when it comes to blogging and marketing niche, people just have to follow some rules to be able to promote your business.
Spatch Merlin
in the past, I never knew anything about article marketing, blogging, for marketing, as well as how to effectively market on the Internet. It was all interesting to me. However, there were days I sat and cried physically at my computer desk, because though I wanted to do what the big people were doing online, no one was helping me. So, what I did was start searching in Google for how to install a WordPress blog on a dedicated server. From there, I started learning about how to network in online discussion business forums. afterwards, I started learning about the power of search engine optimization and building back links through blog commenting, and leaving signatures in forum discussion threads. the only other thing I don’t completely understand is how to do natural link exchanges, and be in compliance with Google AdSense terms of service. If anyone knows, or, knows of a legitimate natural link building exchange site that is within Google AdSense TOS, please let me know. I am interested in naturally exchanging links with relevant sites, as well as finding additional “do follow discussion forums” on the World Wide Web. Thank you for your time in reading this comment đŸ™‚
hey Sanjeev
thanks for your article….I am waiting for your new article….many benefit I got from your article….good luck!
Thanks Sandipan, You will be seeing it soon enough.
I actually know of a few sites that did have a thriving forum, but ultimately took it down because it got out of hand. With a blog clicks of people are harder to develop.
oh thankyou for this…..I have never heard of Forum Marketing, i so need to grow my community, really glad i came across this post…thanks
hi guys,
I had to stop by the blog today and see what’s going on in this beautiful community. With that said, I’ve been focusing more on meaningfully engaging with others online, as well as changing up the professional formatting of site content on DrewryNewsNetwork, with an emphasis on engaging more personally on the web with people. I have a better understanding today of [engaging within an online community], while delivering meaningful information to others and sustaining positive online relationships. Thanks so much for having me here đŸ™‚
I have never tried Forum marketing and it is indeed an excellent marketing idea. Thanks for sharing about it.
forum marketing is all right. I just learned about it a little bit over year ago, and use it today in my online marketing efforts. forum marketing is also a wonderful way to advertise your blog website for free, while building meaningful relationships as well as inbound links. forum marketing is also responsible for the accelerated traffic and success of many bloggers, as it helps to increase online advertising revenue đŸ™‚
Forum marketing is indeed a good marketing implementation. However, I have been seeing a lot of people spamming in forums. Moderators are present but still they weren’t able to keep these spammers away. A captcha is the best to keep these spammers away.
I was also getting few spams in the forums and installed captcha and 1 random math question, spam has been reduced, so it is an effective way.
on my forum, I’ve installed many anti-spam forum plug-ins, so that those who use automated programs to post spam to forms will not be able to post messages effectively. It cripples their ability to not only post to my forum, but, you also be unable to get back links.
Sign up and ontributr yourself in forum is very good . It gives you the following benefit:
1)traffic
2)backlinks to your website
3)and reputation also.
Interesting article. Networking is important and forums serve as great destinations.
I too had a forum for QnA but had to stop it due to excessive spam posts and also choosing the correct software is the way to go. All the best for the forum and hope that you can market it quite well.
Thanks Bishwajeet, I had just enabled 2 random questions for signup and first two post and saw a nice reduction in spam, I agree its hard to fight with the scam on forums.
If the blog is on a specific niche, better if the niche is debatable, forum marketing would really help the blog to succeed more faster! And yeah, engaging with other forums is always an advantage!
Hi Sanjeev,
This is Sanjeev. I have a blog of mine and have been blogging for quite sometime. Your post has helped me a lot, to learn about forum marketing for promotion of blogs. So, far I did not think in this angle but you have shown me a new way.
Thanks again,
Sanjib
i woluld like to say I think even i am sure the biggest problem spamming forum, anyone can Forum and Forum Admin, not only unique link, some links more than 3-4 to connect.
I use one of the biggest forums online for marketing. I think everyone knows which forum that is. It’s a great place to make connections and money, but a bad place to buy stuff, if you get what I mean…lol.
Find a great forum where there is a lot of action going on and it will boost your site’s connectivity.
I too had a forum for QnA but had to stop it due to excessive spam posts and also choosing the correct software is the way to go!
Even I use forum for marketing and its the same forum, which Wade has mentioned (name not mentioned đŸ˜€ LOL). He is right that forum is a bad place for buying stuffs. đŸ˜€
BTW thanks for the post Sanjeev đŸ™‚
Thanks Sanjeev,
I really admire your insights.
I have gone through your posts on affiliate marketing and wordpress. They have helped me a lot.
Thanks.
Well,the information about forum ,you shared here is very useful,till now i have not joined form.i would like to join it.
Thanks
Thanks Sanjeev for your tips. I have question for you, and I believe with your tips that forum marketing is one of the good ways to build community