Simply building a blog, and placing out there on the internet, doesn’t guarantee success in internet marketing. In fact, by failing to publicize and market your blog or any other website, it is almost certainly doomed to failure.
The old idea of “if you build it, they will come” might work for a movie script writer. It won’t likely work in the real world. You need to find simple, low cost ways to promote your blog to potential readers. For a business blog writer, those readers are also potential customers and clients.
One proven technique, that is well known and practiced by the internet marketing pros, is posting on internet message boards and forums. By posting on the message forums, savvy marketing people gain visitors, establish themselves as experts in their field, and multiply their success many times over. You can too.
All you have to do, is start to think like a marketing professional. The internet discussion boards, and even some of their other members, will do much of the marketing on your behalf.
Internet message and discussion forums are everywhere. Their many members discuss topics ranging from baseball to photography to crafts to search engine optimization. Whatever your business or hobby, there are numerous internet message forums awaiting your membership.
There are also some very good and active blog specific message boards. You will want to make a point of joining and participating on them.
Blogger Talk
Blogger Forum
Forum4Bloggers
Yahoo Blogging Community Free membership required
About.com Weblog Forum
To join most message boards, you will have to register as a member. The membership process usually requires you to provide a user name. You may use your real name, or if you prefer, you can create a fictional pen name, called a “handle”. You will be required to provide a valid e-mail address for communications.
Some forums require some additional personal information, to protect the message board, from those who might wish to destroy their online community. Your information is almost universally protected by a password. Once you have that information in place, and had your membership approved and confirmed, you are almost ready to post.
You are not quite ready yet, however. You still have a few things to do, in order to have your message board postings help market and promote your business and your blog.
In order to gain new visitor traffic, develop a solid reputation, and gain search engine optimization benefits, you must create what is known as a signature file, or “sig line”. Not all forums allow one, so be sure to check in advance of creation.
What a signature file does, is create a live link back to your website, from the message forum itself. That link into your website is very important.
The signature file for your link should not simply be your website’s URL. If at all possible, avoid that type of signature as it doesn’t describe your business. It also provides less than the desired level of search engine optimization. Using your blog title is better, but still is not what you want to use.
Use a your targeted keyword phrase as your signature. If you can use the keywords, right in the live link, that is the best possible signature. It provides a keyword inbound link to your website. Note, however, not all forum links have search engine benefits, as they are sent through redirects. The search engines themselves may not be giving them any weight any longer either. Use signature file keywords with that possibility in mind.
Many message forums permit the use of additional descriptions, brief offers to visitors, phone numbers, and even physical and e-mail addresses. Take advantage of these free promotional vehicles.
By targeting your most important keyword phrases, you accomplish several important goals at one time. You successfully describe your blog or business, and possibly what your blog offers for anyone clicking on the link.
Armed with a message board membership and a signature file, you are now ready to begin posting on the forum. When you post, you want to be polite. Ask good questions seeking any information that you require. There are no foolish questions. Everyone was a first time poster at some point, so don’t be shy.
If you are able to answer other members’ questions, feel free to do so. By providing good informative answers that seek to help others, you will develop a reputation as being an expert in your field. That will go far in enhancing your business reputation as well.
As you develop a reputation for providing informative and helpful postings, your opinions and posts will almost always be read by other members. Since the members of the message board are also interested in the same subjects as you, they are all potential readers for your blog. Their families, friends, and business associates are, by extension, also your potential blog readers.
By becoming well known to the board membership, your reputation and that of your business will grow. People usually prefer to do business with people whom they know. That would be you, if you have been writing good thoughtful and informative posts.
They will click on your signature line and check out your blog, your business, your products, and your services. Many will become customers and some will even recommend you to others as well.
Most blog message forums are search engine spider friendly. It is important to note, however, that not all message boards are crawled regularly by search engine robots; but most are. Make certain that you check the search engine friendliness of the board prior to joining.
As you post on a regular basis, and establish yourself as an expert in your industry, you will find a number of other members linking their site to yours.
These natural links are a tremendous boost to both your site’s Google PageRank and to your search engine placements for your keywords. Remember those keywords with little SEO value? Now they can have some real potent effect in natural links from other blogs and websites/
The potential for additional natural incoming links, makes posting on a message boards a powerful technique, for increasing your backlink total. You will also find theme related blog owners who will want to engage in traditional link swaps as well. These exchanged links are still helpful to your blog. They are especially beneficial if they are from sites that are theme related to your own blog topics.
Seeking out a number of message boards, related to your area of interest, is a powerful way to market your blog.
Your marketing efforts will be greatly enhanced through your participation, as an active contributor, to your various discussion boards. Members of those forums will see you as an expert in your field, making it much more likely that they will become your customers and clients in the future.
Join those internet message boards today and start posting your way to success.
