More Blog Money

Forums can be very effective in driving traffic and building links to your blog provided you contribute and interact positively with other members. In order to become a respected and trusted member, there are certain points to take note both in terms of behaviour as well as maximizing forum marketing opportunities.

1. Identify Yourself
   Let people know who you are by providing a good profile write up with a link to your blog and include your photo. People are more willing to interact with (and buy from) someone they know more than someone anonymous.

2. Be Honest And Upfront
   Don’t do things which create a dishonest image of yourself, such as creating multiple identities or getting friends to provide false testimony for your products.

3. Be Courteous
   Think twice before shooting off a curt retort, rude comment or unsubstantiated allegations. Even if you apologize for the mistake later, your post remains in search engine databases indefinitely and people who come across that particular inappropriate post will look no further and move on.

4. Be Contactable
   Let readers have some way of contacting you. Use either the signature if the forum allows one or set up your profile to allow private messaging or email.

5. Post In Popular Threads
   Posting in popular threads gives you more exposure and contact with members since more people read them.

6. Use Keywords In Post Titles
   Busy forums are visited frequently by search engines and using keywords to optimize your post leads to your product or service being indexed in search results.

7. Use Images
   Pictures draw attention and including a relevant image link in your signature if the forum allows it helps attract eyeballs.

8. Post Often
   Making your presence felt by posting frequently and actively participating in discussions gives you a higher profile. Readers will find it hard to ignore you if they keep seeing your name in posts.

Participating in forums should be enjoyable and not something you do just for the sake of getting backlinks and blog traffic. However, be careful to keep track of the amount of time spent in forums because it can be addictive to point where you unconsciously neglect other aspects of blog marketing.

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