Social marketing is all about finding like-minded people and sharing thoughts and experiences with them. Forums can be the most important and effective place to share those thoughts and experiences. Forums are online communities where people participate in different discussion groups. Due to the community nature of forums, they have become an effective tool for social marketing and can be quite effective vehicles to launch a viral marketing campaign.
Forums have, in the past, been recognized as the source of negative information that has gone viral, not just around the web, but out into the mainstream media as well. This same power can be used to send a positive message.
There are thousands of forums, perhaps tens of thousands, so the key is to find one or more forums that can benefit your business or website. A simple search on any of the search engines will provide a list of forums for consideration. To select a forum to work with, consider the following:
- Eliminate forums that do not have a close association with your niche
- If the forum doesn’t have a membership of several hundred, forget it – in fact a membership base of more than 1000 is even better
- Find a forum that has been around for several years and has a posts numbering in the high thousands
- Select a forum that has a wide range of thread topics that receive regular posts – the site should be receiving 30+ posts each day
- If the forum appears to have a lot of spam comments – ignore it
- Finally, check the forum rules and be sure you can have a link to your site embedded in your signature.
Participate – The key to success on forums is to participate and to do in a sensible manner. When writing a post, or commenting on someone elses post, do so intelligently and accurately. Don’t try to answer a question or provide a solution if you are unsure of the topic.
The best way to make an impression is by providing assistance to others – assistance that helps them solve their problems. Stay objective and on topic and your will earn respect. Once you have earned that respect, people will take what you say as an authority and it is that authority that lies at the heart of viral marketing campaign.
If you make a statement, a recommendation or provide an opinion, people will take that as a fact and pass it on to others – in essence the start of viral marketing campaign. Forums have long been used to get things started – you can to!
