Ebiz Snap

Find the right forums

The very first step in proper forum marketing is finding the right forum to join in the first place. You may already know of some good ones, but if you haven’t found some it’s very easy to do. Simply type “your niche forum” into Google or another search engine. The results that appear should point you to some great options.

Examples:

“gardening forum”
“skin care message board”
“pet community”

Now, it should be said that not all of the forums that appear in the results are going to be worthwhile. Some of them are pretty dead and don’t get a lot of traffic. You want to find a very active forum with many members and many new posts every day in order to have the best results.

You should also read the forum rules and start browsing some posts to get a feel for things before you join and spend a lot of time. You are, of course, going to want to be able to put your website in your signature file and have a certain amount of freedom in your posts. That doesn’t mean you are planning to spam the forum, but you’re not going to get any visitors to your site if you are unable to display your link.

Tags: Forum Marketing

Forum Marketing

Forum marketing is another excellent way to get more traffic. Forums, or message boards, are targeted communities where members join in order to have discussions with each other about the topic at hand.

For example, since you’re interested in Internet marketing and finding ways to drive traffic to your website the chances are good that you are a member of an Internet marketing forum or two or three. The same goes for people who are interested in dog training, gardening, skin care, and nearly every niche out there.

In fact, here are two that I recommend:

www.warriorforum.com – Where all the “big dogs” hang out. A great place to learn and get special deals.

http://www.123webmarketing.com/forumtraffic.html – This forum allows you to earn free advertising credits for every post that you read and/or respond to.

By joining forums and interacting in the right way, you can definitely drive traffic to your sites.

Tags: Forum Marketing

Use Wikidot.com

Wikidot.com is a bit different then the other Web 2.0 sites mentioned, but it can still help you get traffic to your website. Many people have heard of and use Wikipedia.com, and this is a similar idea.

The difference here is that you get to create your own wiki site instead.

After you sign up for WikiDot you will get to create your own community wiki. You can add a front page that links to your website as well as several other pages. This can act as a gateway to your own website, which has the potential to get you a lot of traffic.

Since you’re the leader of this wiki, you’ll get even more respect as an expert. Not only will you get the visitors from your community members and others who stumble across your wiki, you get the benefit of the backlinks so you can rank more highly in the search engines.

It’s always exciting when you can find sites like this that serve a dual purpose for giving you traffic.

Tags: Web 2.0

Use MSN LiveSpaces

MSN Live Spaces at http://home.spaces.live.com/ is yet another web 2.0 platform.

You can create a profile as well as your own blog on this site.

Just like Blogger and WordPress, this gives you a chance to blog about your site and related content to get targeted visitors in the LiveSpaces community, as well as to improve your rankings in the search engines.

Tags: Web 2.0

Use Twitter.com

Twitter is an amazing web 2.0 site that is becoming more and more popular all the time. This one is a little bit different than the rest of the Web 2.0 sites we’ve discussed so far, but that’s what makes it so great. It’s all about networking with others in what is called a micro-blogging platform.

When you sign up for Twitter, you’ll be given a chance to collect followers and to follow other people. The point here is that you will see the updates of people you follow, and people who follow you will see your updates.

One recommended tactic is to find people who you enjoy learning from and/or networking with and see who they are following. Follow those same people.

Here are some people that I enjoy following:

http://twitter.com/rayedwards (Amazing copywriter – amazing man)
http://twitter.com/SuperAffil (Doug Champigny – great guy)
http://twitter.com/Nicoledean (Affiliate Manager & Mostly-sane Marketer)

Beware of following people who have tons of followers and are only following back a few. Realize that they’re viewing Twitter as a one-way street, so determine whether that’s ok with you or not. For some people it will be fine, and for others, you may choose to pass.

On Twitter, you can talk about the great things you’re doing to your site or in your business, as well as the things that are going on in your personal life. You can follow people who are interested in your niche, and they will most likely follow you back. As you update and talk about the helpful content on your website, you’ll start to get very targeted traffic.

Another great thing about Twitter is that your updates, or “tweets”, that contain links will show up in the search engines. This gives your next chance to rank for the keywords you are tweeting about as well as add additional backlinks to your website. All of this leads to getting more traffic. It’s also a way to build up relationships, which is what gives you steady followers and great rewards

Tags: Web 2.0

Use Weebly.com

Weebly is yet another Web 2.0 property that can help you get higher rankings and more traffic. Weebly offers an easy way to create a small webpage that is set up on the Weebly.com domain.

They have a very simple drag-and-drop interface, and you’re easily able to add links to your website as well as quality content that will entice people to visit your website. In order to get the most out of Weebly, you want to make use of the different text and graphics features that will be attractive to prospective visitors.

Tags: Web 2.0

Use Squidoo.com

Squidoo is an excellent website that can help you generate traffic to your own site. You create “lenses” with Squidoo, which are not necessarily blogs, but not websites either. You could say lenses are something in between. Squidoo offers many different modules that help you add content quicker and easier than you might think possible.

Squidoo also lets you place your RSS feed from your blog on your lens. This is a hands-off way to keep your lens fresh with content since it will update itself as you update your blog. Your blog gets the benefit of the great link.

Squidoo is also very flexible about placing links to your own site, unlike HubPages or Wordpress.com.

Google and other search engines also tend to love Squidoo, so you’ll find that your lenses rank highly and send link-love to your site. You can also join groups within Squidoo in order to get even more targeted people to visit your lens, and eventually your website.

Tags: Web 2.0

Use WordPress.com

WordPress.com is another free blogging platform that should not be confused with WordPress.org, which is a self hosted blogging application.

WordPress.com will allow you to set up a blog as a sub domain on their own domain. Just like Blogger.com, this is a great way to build links to your own website so that your rankings in the search engines increase.

You do need to be careful with WordPress.com because they’re a lot stricter about having things like affiliate links throughout your blog and being overly promotional. Still, you shouldn’t have to worry as long as you offer quality content and link to your own site in a smart way to get all the benefits of WordPress.com without being shut down.

Tags: Web 2.0

Use Blogger.com

Blogger.com is a free blogging platform that is owned by Google.

One strategy is to set up a blogger blog as your main website. It’s quick and easy.

Another strategy is to set up a Blogger blog as a method to get links to your main websites.

When you set up a blog with Blogger it will be created as a sub domain on the blogspot.com domain. (For instance http://jimmydbrown.blogspot.com/ )

That means you get all the link juice that comes from an authority site like blogger, which is a great thing for you.

To take advantage of this strategy for the search engines, you’d want to create a “mini blog” on Blogger that links back to your own site. This is a similar concept to adding articles to an article directory, though you have more control over the blog. The downside is that you don’t get the built-in article directory traffic.

The more entries you add, the more likely you are to be found by other Blogger.com users, and to rank highly in the search engines because your blog is coming from such a respected domain.

Since you’re linking back to your main website you should start to see your traffic and search engine rankings increase. Remember that every little bit helps, and that results build over time, so each of these strategies will work together to increase your overall traffic.

Tags: Web 2.0

Use Facebook

Facebook is like MySpace in a lot of ways, though there are many differences as well.

You can make friends with this site.
You can update people with your blog entries.
You can use the updates section to talk about changes you’ve made to your website.
You can join networking groups that are related to the niche topic you’re focusing on.
You can place a link to your site and company in your profile so that as many targeted people (the friend’s you’ve selected) as possible can view it.

Just like with MySpace, you want to interact with people in order to get more traffic and make connections. Your Facebook visitors will enjoy seeing what you have to offer, and you’ll get more traffic.

Facebook also has an array of add-ons available that have been developed by independent programmers. These offer a way to interact with prospective customers and visitors to get them even more interested and show them what you have to offer.

For example, you can send your Facebook friends small digital gifts, which may make them more likely to visit your site and eventually become a customer.

Tags: Web 2.0