Marketing Via Messageboards & E-mail Discussion Lists - An Alternative View
One of the most suggested means of getting traffic to a site in the early stages is to get involved in messageboard and e-mail discussions on your topic of choice. The idea is that you can show your expertise and therefore get traffic to your site via your signature file (most discussion lists allow you to include your signature file with your post - a few lines with your name, site address and maybe a very brief description). Whilst this is a valid tip, I don't believe that the real reason for why you should do this has been investigated far enough previously. Firstly, if you post an ad for your site on a discussion list, your are spamming and will create a bit of a fiasco. This does not make good business sense. So, the way to do it is to look for people asking questions and answer them. The issue here is your reasons for doing this. If your reason is purely to drive traffic to your site, you probably won't be terribly successful and, sometimes, people will work out what you are up to. Therefore, your goal should be to be seen as an expert in your field, not to get traffic to your site. Even if you don't include a signature with your posts, you can still make a name for yourself and, in the long term, this will prove to be a far more profitable approach. I have visited many discussion lists in my time and it is easy to see the people that have gained respect. From a business point of view, they are the ones who will benefit from this approach, not the people who post simple answers to try to get an immediate effect. Your goal must always be to achieve success in your online venture and your personal credibility will play a major role in this. So, when looking at marketing on messageboards and in E-mail discussion lists, establishing your credentials as an expert in your field must be your number one priority, not short term traffic generation methods. About The Author Sean Burns is the author of the WebmastersReference.com Newsletter - http://www.webmastersreference.com/newsletter. More than five years of experience in site design, marketing, income generation, search engine optimisation and more is passed on to subscribers - hype free. Sign up today to get real information of real value to webmasters. seanb@webmastersreference.com
Related News
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Five Tips to Launching a Successful Message Forum
Forums a.k.a. "message boards" can be great marketing tools for your website. They attract repeat visitors and provide a meeting place for them to share their thoughts, ideas, questions and concerns.
6 Forum Management Essentials
If you are tasked with managing a forum, congratulations to you. If you find yourself weighed down by mundane management tasks, you are not alone. Let's examine some essentials to help you run an effective and vibrant message board community without the hassles of micromanagement.
Using Message Boards Properly
We all have our own reasons for joining message boards. Maybe its to meet some friends, or find some ideas for your business. Maybe you just needed a place to announce your party. Whatever the reason, are you using them properly?
Whats The Deal With Discussion Lists For Writers? (Part One)
Are they really free? Are they actually helpful?
How to Build a Forum That Doesnt Fall Apart Two Months Later, Part 1
If you can get a big enough following from customer lists and newsletters you might want to start your own forum. But I always see people trying to start a forum and it falls flat on their face, mainly because they make it too big and they never promote it.
Business Forums
Forums are a community where a group of webmasters can post a discussion on different topics, like running an online business, web promotion, marketing, web design, etc. You can post questions asking for advice and learn a great deal of knowledge from others who participate. You can also participate by answering questions that you are well versed on.
Forum Software 101 - Why It is Vitally Important to Choose the Best Software to Run your Forum
When you go through all of the work and trouble to set up your own forum, you don't want anything to get in the way of its success... especially your forum software. Because of this, it is incredibly important for you to have a good forum software solution that will support your forum just the way you want and provide you will with all of the tools and user functions needed to manage your forum. Don't just choose the first forum software you come across, do your homework and choose one that is going to work for you.
Whats The Deal With Discussion Lists? (Part Three)
Why Do People Start Writing Discussion Lists?
Milton Keynes - A City For The Future?
The two main features of Milton Keynes which distinguish it from older towns are:
Forums - Why You Might Want One And How To Get One...
Several people have asked me about setting up a forum on their website recently, so I thought it might be helpful to cover this topic for the benefit of all my readers.
Forums: How DO You Get People to Post!?
Running a web forum is no easy task. If you own one, you know how labor-intensive it is. You spent hours perfecting your forum. You thought up dozens of categories and topics. You customized the interface, set user permissions, sent out welcome emails. Tons of members signed up and logged in. Time for the payoff, right? Wrong. People log in to your forum daily, yet no one posts. Why?
The Benefits of Hiring Forum Posters
There are many business benefits to be realized by including a forum on your website. A forum is an area where individuals can converse on a regular basis about different topics and ideas as well as discuss your services and products. Of course, you can have different threads and decide more or less what topics are in your forum, but you will need to have people posting in your forum to keep interest and people returning.
Forums ? Should You Have Them On Your Website?
Forums have become a common feature in many websites. With good free scripts available, and paid scripts being relatively cheap, it seems that every new website has its own forum(s). But is it wise to add forums to your website?
11 Ways To Increase Forums Activities
Getting people to post in your forum is probably the hardest thing to do. First, not all of your readers will post messages. In fact, only a small percentage will post regularly, and most will never post at all. Second, nobody want to be the first person to post a message. In fact, topic starters (people that start new topic of discussion) will be a small percentage of your posters; the rest will simply reply to topics that have been started.
Using Forums To Network Successfully
According to one of the entries found at dictionary.com the definition of the word network is as follows: Something resembling an openwork fabric or structure in form or concept, especially: An extended group of people with similar interests or concerns who interact and remain in informal contact for mutual assistance or support.
Internet Forums - Six Ways To Avoid Disaster
Internet Forums are highly popular, they cater for all tastes and deal with every topic imaginable. People visit Internet forums for a variety of reasons, the most common being the search for information or entertainment. The Internet forum is a safe environment if you behave sensibly but you can find yourself in dangerous territory if you ignore the following warnings.
5 Reasons You Should Market Online
If you've got a website you'll need to let the world know about it. This is called internet marketing. Believe me, it wasn't too long ago that I didn't know a single thing about this concept. However, ever since I committed myself to learning about the ins and outs of online marketing, my sales have dramatically increased. Marketing online is a completely different challenge than offline marketing but it has its benefits. If you want to take your website to a different level, drive more traffic, and increase your sales, you need to consider the benefits of marketing online.
How to Market on Forums and Message Boards Without Upsetting Anyone
Believe it or not, you can market on forums and message boards without pissing anyone off. In fact, not only can you market this way, you SHOULD market this way, and I'll tell you why later in this article. But for now, I'd like to point out that the reason I'm writing this article is because someone on an affiliate forum that I frequent got kicked out of an affiliate program for spamming a message board community. He'd posted his opinion of the affiliate product in the "personal opinions" section of the board, and the moderator of the community reported him to the merchant, who then kicked him out of the affiliate program.
Get Traffic & Sales Using Discussion Forums
Message boards, discussion forums and newsgroups can all produce very profitable results for you and your business. Most of us already participate in one or more of these and the more you participate the bigger the benefits to you and your website will be.
8 Tips for Starting and Maintaining a Successful Online Forum
Nothing promotes a business online better than staying in touch with prospects. The more interactive the continued contact, the more of a relationship that is built with a potential client.
|
