Forums are one of the best places to advertise and market your sites provided you know how to leverage on the traffic. There are tons of forums in all sorts of niches you can imagine and best of all the traffic that you drive to your websites are all targeted traffic. It is with this knowledge that many successful marketers successfully build their online businesses with. I have written below some starter tips on how you can use forums to drive traffic to your websites.

First of all, start off by selecting a username that is representative of the site or sites that you are promoting. For example if you are promoting a photography site, you can select a username like “Photo Master” or something catchy. In this way, people will recognize and remember from your username what your online business is.

After selecting a suitable username, the next step is to work on your profile. Most forums will let you display your contact information and some details of yourself. Try to complete or update all contact details and always remember to include your website’s URL. This is a good way to post an inbound link to your website.

Once you finished with your profile, it is time to fill up your signature with links back to your web sites. Forum signatures are a great way to promote your sites especially if you are a regular poster because every time you make a posting in the forum, your post will includes your signatures underneath the post you have just made. Please bear in mind not all forums allow links in your signature. Please read each forum’s Terms of Service (TOS) carefully below updating links in your signature. Some forums will allow you to do that if you hit a certain number of posts. Others will totally disallow links in your forum signatures. Forum signatures are a great way to promote your sites especially if you are a regular poster because every time you make a posting in the forum, your post will includes your signatures underneath the post you have just made.

Now that you have finished updating your signature, it is time to load an image for your forum avatar. You can use your website’s logo with your website’s URL in it if the forum’ TOS allows you to do that. Otherwise, you can choose any image that you like or representative of your website.  

Alright, you have finished updating all the necessary stuff and now it is time to start mingling in the forum. This is especially important because the more active you are, the greater the chances you’ll get to generate traffic for your websites. Always begin posting in the “Newcomer” or “Introduction” section. Post a short introduction of yourself and what you do. Another great way to mingle with people is to welcome new members like yourself by posting in their respective introductory threads.

Once you are comfortable and having introduced yourself, it is time to look for threads where you can showcase your expertise and knowledge. Be patient and work on building your credibility first as new members are always look upon with distrust. When starting a new thread or posting a reply to any post, always sound polite. It is always good to behave and sound polite in your words. The forum is a great place to interact and mingle with like-minded people, so there is no point for you to pissed people off with your language.

So there go my starter tips for those who are keen to use forums as a source of targeted traffic to your websites. Remember to have fun in the forums and build up lasting relationships with fellow forumers while building up your business.