How to Effectively Use Forums to Promote

Establishing a reputation of excellence and expertise is vital for any small business. It's likely you will have competition with a big chain store or big name brand your unique touch is the personal VIP touch you can give your customers.

Whether you are promoting your offline business online or are promoting an online business a great way to establish a reputation for excellence is by engaging people on forums. This helps you build relationships of trust with the online contingent and draw them further into your services and products.

While the big shiny social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn get a lot of attention many people are overlooking forums and they are missing out on a very powerful marketing tool.

The amazing thing about forums is they are an easy place to establish a great reputation for your business when marketing online.

What you absolutely should not do is start spamming forums with ads for your business the second you sign up, not only will this annoy the other forum users it will also end in your account being deleted.

To get the most out of forum marketing you need to join one that is related to your area of expertise and start offering fellow forum members advice. For example if you are a beauty salon owner you could answer questions in beauty forums and leave a link in your signature to your site.

It may not sound much like a cash generator compared to big expensive PPC campaigns but answer enough questions with clear concise advise and not only will you start appearing more and more in the top of search engines your answers will be seen time and time again by thousands of people who are searching for the same answers to the same questions round the clock.

When you build a number of great posts and have connected with your fellow forum member's people become interested in you and when you keep giving good content they look forward to what you are going to post next and will buy from you when you promote your products and services.

Spend a little time practising a great signature, this will appear each time you post and has to make the reader really want to click through.

A great way to increase trust in your business area is to create your own forum. You will have to promote it to make people aware of your forum but you can use social media such as Twitter and Facebook and promote it to your followers. When you build a busy forum directly attached to the website you have for your offline business you can direct the traffic from the forum straight to it.

Top SEO Forums Sites List -

http://searchengineforums.com/

http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/foren/

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/

http://www.akamarketing.com/webmaster-forums/

http://www.highrankings.com/forum/

http://www.seochat.com/

http://www.ihelpyou.com/forums/

http://www.v7n.com/forums/

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/

http://www.searchengineforums.com/apps/searchengine.forums/

http://www.searchguild.com/

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/