Niche marketing and forum etiquette

[Liam Hamer]

A traffic building technique that's discussed a lot here and elsewhere is posting on forums related to our specific niches. I am currently building a niche site and am researching forums related to it. There are a lot of them, and it seems nobody uses them to get traffic to their own sites/products. Now this either means it can be wide open for me, or if people twig one of the reasons I am active is to get traffic to my site, it might not be looked upon too fondly.

This is a niche I'm passionate about and have a decent amount of knowledge about, so fitting in in these forums shouldn't be too difficult and I genuinely want to help people with advice and such. This is a niche where people have problems and ask for advice - I'd be in the role of offering advice and answering questions. I don't plan on posting any links or having it in my signature until I've built up a decent presence, but when I do I don't want to feel like I'm taking advantage of people. My site is going to have lots of info, with links to E-books and E-courses. I guess I'm just asking how you guys approach forum posting in your niches. I genuinely want to help people in this niche, so I'm a bit worried about being labeled a spammer or someone taking advantage of others. That's not who I am AT ALL, but in the IM world, I know a lot of us encounter this kind of prejudice. Would love to hear your thoughts Warriors

[TLTheLiberator]

If you're going to do all that you've spoke about then you shouldn't have any probs.

If the forum allows sig files, go for it.

You may want to wait a couple weeks before making your sig file public, just to be cautious - but go for it.

Forum marketing can be very rewarding if you add value and participate with few high traffic forums or a whole bunch of them with a lot of combined traffic.

All The Best!!

TL

[Liam Hamer]

Yes, I plan on providing as much value as possible In terms of a clickable signature link, the only reason I'm a little worried is because I rarely see anyone else use them in this niche. But like you said, I won't even put one up for a good while anyway.

[dynameek]

From my point of view and everything I've learned about forum marketing, if you don't make it obvious that you're there for just the traffic then you'll be fine. You'll want to post relevant messages everytime which shouldn't be hard since you have the knowledge.

Spamming only occurs when you reply to every message with meaningless sentences or phrases. So, I think you'll be alright.

All the best.

[kayelex]

From what you said, it seems you have all the ingredients in mind of a successful forum marketing campaign. As long as you are providing good content and not shoving links down people's throats then you should be in good shape. It also helps that it is a topic you are actually interested in

[Saosin]

I always just pretend that I am mingling at a party and/or networking event.

Just put your details in your sig and be cool yet helpful while in the forums.

And don't use any PM software b/c it's starting to get obvious.

[barbling]

I generally wait awhile before putting my links in my signature and will first just answer any questions that come my way.

Participating in the offtopic channels also goes a long way to joining a thriving niche community and building in trust. You become more of a human bean and less of an entity that way.

[bethrobinson]

Another thought - If no one is using their signatures for website links then ask the forum owner if they mind if you do so. Many niche forum owners are very protective of their community and would likely appreciate your concern.