November 9, 2005

Blogger Forums as Promotion

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 10:55 am

Blogger forums are a great place for networking. It’s amazing what we can learn just by showing up and participating. Enthusiastic learners and generous teachers are attractive human beings. We draw others to us, and every good-natured, authentic interaction is one step to relationship building. Nothing out does the fast-pace give-and-take of a blog forum for teaching-learning, story-swapping, and bloggy brainstorming.

There are some great benefits to becoming a member of a blog forum in my niche.

  • Forums offer a chance to gain visibility, form relationships, and establish a reputation for what I know. Serious blogger forums are like mini-seminars. They’re a great place to ask and answer questions. The very act of participating lets people know that I’m out there and willing to help. People who like what I say might stop by my blog for more, and I’ll have a place I can go to when I run into a bind that is over my head.
  • Talking about my blog is a natural part of the conversation. What would be shameless self-promotion in other venues is using examples in the context of my forum. Pointing a forum friend to an article on my blog that meets their need is something they say thank you for.
  • Leaving a signature link when you enter a thread can be common practice. I realize that I’m joining a group that has it’s own protocols. I look at how others sign their names before I make my signature. If the forum is a good match, I try to have posts in five or six threads. For the first day or two in Forum Land, I do as the forumers do. (In editorial we call that 2.3rds of a pun–p-u).
  • Some forums ask me to introduce myself and my blog. I take those opportunities very seriously and pull together three important points–the purpose of my blog, a little of my strategy, and what I think readers come to see. I chose those three because I want the forum to know me as a multi-faceted thinker who takes blogging seriously.
  • Search engines see forums as a hotbed of content. When the bots come they find plenty of tag-relevant words being used, my link in that mix gets indexed too.

Some forums may be part of an association, directory, a webring, club, or alliance. These groups offer the advantages of a forum and additional opportunities to network with people about your blog. They might even offer opportunities in which you plan blog promotion events together.

Whenever I start out in a new forum, I keep in mind that I’m building new relationships and a new reputation. I take care not to bring out my complete sense of humor too soon or too often, because I want to be taken seriously, and I want the people I meet to know I take them seriously as well.

Don’t join just any forum look around and be choosy. Find one that will be a mutually-beneficial experience for you and its members. Also read Hart’s comment after Blog Promotion Basics [for Everyone]â€? to find out how he learned that the wrong forum is worse than being in none.

–ME “Liz” Strauss


Filed under Community, Marketing, Strategy, Successful Blog |



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24 Comments to “Blogger Forums as Promotion”

  1. November 9th, 2005 at 2:33 pm
    Jennifer Grucza said

    I don’t think I’d ever heard of blogger forums before. Are they usually more general, talking about blogging and how to blog, etc., or are there actually blogging forums in various niches? Do you have links to any examples? I’d be curious to check them out.

    A few people have come to my Perfect Fifths site through my signature on a couple classical music forums, but I’ve gotten even more visits when I put a link to a particular post in the message itself.

  2. November 9th, 2005 at 3:01 pm
    ME "Liz" Strauss said

    Jennifer,
    . I belong to Writer’s Blog Alliance. Yes, there are forum that are just for bloggers. These come from Google Blog Search. I did music forums. They look interesting. Let me know if they work.

    http://www.classicalforums.com/

    http://www.musicforte.com/forums/

    Liz

  3. November 9th, 2005 at 3:59 pm
    Robb D said

    A good blog forum to get you started is Blogger Forum.

  4. November 9th, 2005 at 5:24 pm
    ME "Liz" Strauss said

    Thanks Robb.
    Jennifer’s niche is music, which I why I suggest those, but I’m sure others will be looking for one like BF to start out with.
    Liz

  5. November 9th, 2005 at 8:43 pm
    Martin (HomeOfficeVoice) said

    Yes, I totally concure. For a bootstrapper (ie: zero marketing money) I’ve had my best marketing efforts via particitating in forums.

    Haven’t really checked out blogging-specific forums yet, I’m more into my niche and there are a fair bit of forums out their for small/home business.

    As you said, be choosy. My mistake was joing way too many forums and not having the time to do justice to them. I culled the lot and now only go to 3 forums.

  6. November 9th, 2005 at 8:57 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Martin,
    Even three sounds like a lot to keep up with when you have a business to run. :)

    What’s the differences among the three?
    Liz

  7. November 9th, 2005 at 11:50 pm
    Martin (HomeOfficeVoice) said

    Liz,

    I’m not saying all 3 are equal - I visit one every day (it’s the most niche for me and has the biggest reach) and the other two once a week.

    What would be a great time saver is if forums had better RSS integration - then I could subscribe to dozens of forums and simply scan the headlines every so often on my newsreader and make posts on items that are up my alley.

  8. November 9th, 2005 at 11:58 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Martin,
    RSS Forums doesn’t seem like such a big reach. Wonder why that hasn’t happened already? Seems to make a lot of sense. There’s more information in some forums than on some blogs. :)
    Liz

  9. November 10th, 2005 at 12:55 am
    Martin (HomeOfficeVoice) said

    That’s exactly my thought process too - and it seems like a natural mix: so many foum posts with the usefulness of a newsreader.

    I know that the main forum software being used (not sure what’s it called) has rss facilities - I once helped via email a smaller blog set it up for their forum, so I know that it’s possibile.

  10. November 10th, 2005 at 1:17 am
    ME Strauss said

    So, Martin, it’s your idea. How do you do it and make yourself into a six-figure feedburner? :)

  11. November 10th, 2005 at 1:48 am
    Martin (HomeOfficeVoice) said

    You got me wrong Liz, I’m technically-challeneged as the best of them, I’m a slow learner when it comes to techie stuff like this eg: I’m advanced user of RSS but ask me about what’s under the hood and Da’h, Umm .. :-)

    I don’t think I’ll be making my six-figures from anyting technical - my future is in writing.

  12. November 10th, 2005 at 1:54 am
    ME Strauss said

    Hey, I wasn’t saying you had to build it, Martin. You had the idea. You should get the six figures. Maybe Yaro will figure out how to build it and you can give him $1000.00 this time. :)

  13. November 10th, 2005 at 5:11 am
    Gerard McGarry said

    Martin: I love your discipline, limiting checking certain forums on one day of the week! The discovery of RSS has sapped up a lot of my free (and not-so-free) time.

    Must learn to discipline myself!

  14. November 10th, 2005 at 6:23 am
    Martin (HomeOfficeVoice) said

    Gerard - trust me it’s come from experience. I think I was addicted to forums for a while there, would spend hours on end conversing - it seriously took up way too much of my time to the detriment of everything else. Seriously, had to go cold turkey and just step away from it all.

    Liz - me thinks Yaro is a tad too smart to fall for that one - maybe I’ll add another zero to it ;-)

  15. November 10th, 2005 at 8:57 am
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Gerald. Hi Martin.

    Glad to see you guys talking. I think that all blogs and blogging tools, especially stats, should come with a boredom knob so that when when they start to get addicting we can turn the boredom factor up for a while. :)

    Okay Martin, but technically speaking $1000.00 is six figures too you know. :)

  16. November 10th, 2005 at 2:01 pm
    Jennifer Grucza said

    Webmaster World has an RSS feed for new threads in their forums, but I haven’t noticed it on any other forums. I agree it would definitely be a great thing to have.

    Thanks for the links, Liz, though the first site was pretty dead and the second didn’t seem to be specific to classical. I’ll probably keep on reading and posting to violinist.com and classicalmusicguide.com.

  17. November 10th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi, Jennifer.
    Sorry that they weren’t any better. Thanks for the info on the forum feeds. I’ll keep looking for music forums for you. Maybe one of our readers knows of one.
    Liz

  18. July 18th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
    Successful Blog - The Ultimate Blog Directory Handbook: Over 1800+ Submission Sites said

    [...] __________________________________ Other posts to check out: Directories and Click Exchanges as Promotion Blogger Forums as Promotion __________________________________ [...]

  19. August 15th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
    wmc said

    hi,
    Blog forums are great place to learn about blogging. You can interact with other bloggers, exchange ideas, networking, ask questions and many more things you can do over thers.

  20. August 15th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Yes, wmc,
    They sure are. :)

  21. July 20th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
    sam casuncad said

    bloggeries is one, blogflux is another. I really enjoy blog visiting blog forums and they help me out every time i visit there. I also learned so many things about blogs and actually started to have my own blog because of them.

  22. July 20th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Sam!
    Welcome!
    Thanks for adding these to the conversation!

  23. September 17th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
    mark said

    That’s some good tips. Thankfully I already use some of it :)

  24. October 13th, 2007 at 8:42 am
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