8 Forum Marketing Tips

Forum marketing is a great free marketing strategy and it can be a very effective way to generate leads for your network marketing business. Although, there are several things to keep in mind.

Any time you make use of a free marketing strategy, it's essential to take into account you are investing your time instead of your money, so these next suggestions will help you spend that time wisely!

8 Do's And Don'ts Of Forum Marketing:

1. Nobody cares about your business. The last thing you want to do is start pitching your business as soon as you join a forum. Instead, join the discussion and share some expertise when appropriate.

The purpose of joining the forum is to get to know other people, to develop relationships and share information to help each other out. As time goes on and you provide helpful knowlege and guidance to the members of the forum, they will start to recognize you as a leader. It's important to remember, people join people and they are searching for leaders!

2. It is crucial that any and all links go in your signature. It doesn't matter if it's for an affiliate offer or your primary business opportunity, links go in your signature. That's why it's there in the first place! The one exception is when you are sharing a link to information or a helpful website, not affiliate offers or capture pages though.

Offer value and add to the dialogue in your forum posts. Become a leader and other members will become interested in you, which is when they will look to your signature to discover more about you.

3. Do not put links to generic company websites/capture pages in your signature. You've taken the time to create relationships with the members of the forum and provided them with value. The last thing you want to do is turn them away by sending them to a generic company site or capture page.

Be a leader. Leaders have their own branded websites. Send them where you can build a stronger relationship with them by providing them more value such as a blog, for example. It's important, however, that you have an opt-in form on your blog so they can join your mailing list while they are there.

many forums have room to put a couple of links, so one can absolutely be to your own personally branded website/capture page. For example, if you are involved with a generic lead generation system like MyLeadSystemPro, which can assist other network marketers build their business...that would be a great place to send them!

4. Don't be a know-it-all. It's critical to be confident and show leadership, but be respectful of other people and be mindful to not act like you know absolutely everything, because nobody likes that!!

5. Don't be too shy to join a forum on a topic other than marketing. For example, if you're really into golf, it's okay to join a golf forum and use your signature to say something like "Earning money online yet? I can show you how."

6. Be consistent. It's vital to not go and join ten differnet forums at the same time because it won't accomplish anything. It's much more useful to choose 1-3, depending on how much time you have to devote to your marketing. You're better off being more involved on fewer forums than less involved on more forums.

Once you join, get involved. Don't just sit back and observe the discussion! Be prepared to give 3-6 days a week, especially in the beginning. It's important to set aside a certain amount of time to spend on each forum because, if not, time will just slip away!!

7. Be patient. Don't expect to join a couple of forums one week and have leads pouring in the next week. Forum marketing can be very effective, but you must be patient. It takes time, but if you stick with it, it can be a great marketing method. Remember, with marketing you are either spending time or money and in this case, it's definitely time.

8. Join active forums that get a good amount of traffic. Use sites such as Alexa.com to help you with determining some active forums to get involved on. The following are three examples of great forums for network marketers to join:

Warrior Forum
Better Networker
Rich Dad

It looks like it's time to wrap things up! As with any other marketing technique, stick with it and be consistent. It's not going to happen in a week, but if you stay consistent, forum marketing can be a great way to get leads for your network marketing business. It can also be a great place to learn some new things, so don't forget to do that while you're there!