Using Forums to Promote Your Blogs
Sep 6th, 2007 by Anthony
Disclaimer - I own the blogging related forum DoshTalk.com
Over the past few months I have been using forums to help promote and market my blog and I soon discovered how just a few posts on a suitable forum can deliver good quality traffic.
But there are few tips and tricks that you can use to get the most out of your forum experience.
Choose The Right Forum
There is no shortage of forums - in fact in recent months there has been a huge increase in the number of blog specific forums.
Some blogging forums include:
- Authority Blogger Forum (479 Members) - Although the purple design makes me feel sick, there is some great content from some great bloggers.
- Blogging Tips Forum (102 Members) - This forum has been promoted on JohnChow.com yet it still seems like it is having trouble growing. There are lots of different categories to post in.
- DoshTalk - (240 Members) - This forum is geared towards bloggers who are also interested in monetization. This forum also uses a revenue sharing scheme which pays you a varied amount for contributing valuable content.
But don’t think you just have to stick to blogging specific forums as there are plenty of webmaster related forums which will also do the trick. Some of these include:
- Digital Point Forums - This is a huge forum with a strong community. I use this forum to find developers and designers as well as giving the odd plug for my blog.
- Webmaster Talk -Back in the day, this was a huge forum too, but it seems to have died down a bit. However, there is still a great community with lots of categories to post in.
Be A Valuable Addition to the Community
If your register at a forum and straight away begin posting links to your blog everywhere, members are going to get annoyed and no one will take any notice of you. Instead of being a forum spammer, provide quality content to the community, and respond to others discussions.
I don’t much like putting my blog URL in an actual post, instead I make it part of my signature which seems to work well.
I couldn’t resist commenting here and adding another one to the list! I started The Blog Experiment in July (http://www.theblogexperiment.com/blog-forum/) and it’s going very well. I’ve been a long-time member of forums and the one I most frequent besides TBE is SitePoint.
Forums are an EXCELLENT way to network with other members. You really get out of it what you put in so spamming a forum with your sig will be completely ineffective! I used to be strictly a web developer for clients but from what I learned on webmaster forums, I decided that I could and SHOULD create my own sites as well.
If you feel this is self-promotional (as it kind of is), feel free to remove my comment. I just wanted to let you know there is another great resource as well!
[…] at BloggingDosh, there’s a good post on Using Forums to promote your blog. Its something that if done right can be highly valuable (as the number of possible incoming hits […]
I am in DP, Blogger Forum and Earners Forum, love these places! Apart from getting exposure for my blogs, I can actually do networking there and stumble upon blogs which is interesting!
I’m a member of these forums http://www.v7n.com/forums/ They have a rule where you can’t have a URL in your SIG line until you make at least 50 posts. Seems fair enough to me. However, the v7n forum seems to be a popular international forum. I think I may go looking for a more North American based forum. Are most of the doshtalk members from North America?
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