Use Forums to Increase Traffic and Sales

There are many ways to promote your online business. To be successful, you should use a number of different methods in your promotional efforts. Forums are one of the lesser-known marketing techniques that can be very productive.

Many people start out by adding useless posts containing nothing but self-promotional material. Do not fall into that trap. People will steer clear of you, your postings, and your website. In addition, constant self-promotion could get you banned from the forum.

To benefit from forums, you need to give as well as take. Answer questions in your area of expertise. Provide useful information. By doing this, people will see you as an expert in your field. As people read your posts and see that you are very knowledgeable, you will begin to see more and more forum members clicking on your links and visiting your site.

To increase sales or traffic, join as many forums as possible. Make time to read and answer posts. Look for questions or problems that are related to your field of expertise. Everyone is looking for help on certain topics. By helping others, you will actually be helping yourself. Following are a number of techniques to increase your traffic and sales using forums:

Develop a signature (sig) file that includes the URL of your website or sales page. Each time you enter a post to ask or answer a question, include your sig file.

Forums are filled with people who are promoting products. Look through the various posts to find products to purchase, or better yet, get for free.

Forums are an excellent place to find a profitable niche for new product ideas. Examine post topics that have numerous questions. Typically, these are topics that people are interested in. Take note of the types of questions asked and the number of people asking similar questions. This can alert you to the need for a particular product. Make sure to go through these posts thoroughly. If the topic is filled with people answering a question, it is not a candidate for an ebook. If the topic consists primarily of questions, you may have found a profitable niche.

Get others to evaluate your website or sales page. Many forums provide areas where you can ask participants to review your site. This is an excellent technique that can improve your sales dramatically.

I check my traffic regularly and I see consistent traffic to my sites from forums that I post to. Making frequent posts is a great method to improve traffic.

Forums provide a very good source to get information on a product, service, or company before you make a purchase. People are more than happy to give you their opinion on products or companies that they are familiar with.

Forums can be very beneficial to the experienced marketer as well as the newbie. The most beneficial forums are those related to your site or niche. Seek out those related forums and you will surely see increased traffic and sales.

Do you want to learn more about how I make money? Check out my brand new guide on how to make money!

Copyright (c) 2008 Gavin Ingham

As an author, sales motivational speaker and sales force development consultant it is very important that I walk the talk and continue to learn and develop myself. One activity which I am always recommending to clients, friends and everyone alike is to keep reading new, old and interesting ideas to keep yourself stimulated and on top of your game. My personal favourite subjects for reading about are personal development, sales training, sales force development, motivation and mindset, general business and marketing.

Nowadays I read a lot of blogs and am subscribed to several via RSS feeds. One blog which I read regularly is Trish Jones’ blog. She recently posted two interesting posts on blogging as a sales tool and whether blogging can sell services or just products.

These are great questions and ones which every sales person, business owner and entrepreneur needs to consider and as with all great questions there are probably several answers but first a little “sermon” about blogs and blogging…

Many blog marketeers have an inherent interest in positioning blogs as the second coming, as the only marketing required in your mix, as all you need to succeed in selling your products, services, or indeed anything that you want to sell.

For most people and for most businesses this is, at best, misleading and, at worst, dishonest. Blogs are a great form of marketing but they are only one form of marketing. Even if your business is your blog you still need to understand how to market your blog in the same ways that you might market a normal website.

Blogs do not market themselves!

What’s worse is that you can market a brochure style, static website and if you do it well people will visit and when they do they may well buy from you. When you market a blog site people will read your blogs first, before they buy anything. This means that you have to write well if want to make any sales. A good blog needs to be full of good content and people have to like what you have to say and the way that you say it.

And they still have to like, want or need your product or service enough to buy it or to make that call!

If your blog is not well written and people do not like it they will not buy anything off you even if they do come to your blog!

If you only market in the “blogosphere” and your target prospects and clients are in the “real world” you are not going to bring in shed loads of new customers. Many of my clients do not even know that my site is a blog, they just like reading it! They don’t post comments, they email me and I respond!

Blogging also needs to be consistent. It is not a quick fix. Indeed it is probably one of the slowest routes to market and requires far more effort than many other instant fix marketing options (think Google adwords).

In my opinion, blogging also needs to be personal. Your content needs to be yours if you want to sell your services and you need to read and respond to your “community” on your blog. This is all very time consuming.

So why would anybody blog?

To demonstrate expertise… To share a passion… To promote long-lasting marketing content… To build a following… To set themselves a cut above everyone else…

But it’s not easy.

Everyone and their dog seem to be setting up blogs these days. Blogging is highly competitive. Whatever your industry is there will already be good blogs with reader bases up and running. To get into the game you have to have a clear idea of your subject, a desire to write about it, valuable information that people can use, IT skills, marketing ability and a connection with your audience. Perhaps most importantly you need to be able to add value for your readers constantly walking the line between interesting and factual. This is the minimum that you need (or need to buy in) to even get you off the starting line…

But can a blog sell a service?

Well… After converting my website at www.gaviningham.com to a blog some 18 months ago I have blogged consistently and on theme. Traffic has grown, readership has grown, enquiries have grown and conversion ratios have upped.

But does my blog sell my services?

Partly.

Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. I think most times my blog pre-sells people on the idea of working with me. They read my blogs and they know what I am about. They hear what I have to say and they like reading it. I guess that those who don’t, never call.

But those who do are pre-sold to a certain extent. You still need to know how to sell. You still need to solve their pains with your solutions. You still need to position your solution effectively. You still need to do all of the other good stuff.

As with all areas of sales and marketing, blogging is not a quick fix super drug that will turn your business around over night but if you have time to commit to it, if you are passionate about it and if you make it part of your overall sales and marketing mix then blogging is a powerful weapon for selling whatever it is that you’re selling.

What would it take for you to listen to someone about Internet Marketing? Would they have to be in the business long? How about successful? A well known name around the Internet maybe? Well, if you’re looking for just one of those or they all sound good, you might want to turn your attention to Armand Morin’s Internet Marketing Explained. It could possibly change the way you market your business.

Telling a Story

In the beginning of the sales page for Armand Morin’s Internet Marketing Explained, you will hear about all the trials and tribulations he went through as a novice Internet Marketer. Even when his skills were more advanced, there was always something more to learn and while it would be frustrating at times, for more details visit to www.forum-marketing-videos.com he kept on jugging along. Once your finished reading about his experiences then it will be time to learn more about his program.

The Big Man On Campus

One thing to know about Armand Morin’s Internet Marketing Explained is that it comes from a man who has made fifteen million in the last year, sat and dined with Prince Charles, writes a monthly column for Opportunity World and Money N’ Profits, as well as holds seminars, blah blah blah. The point is what you are about to learn is from someone who has been around for quite some time and has figured out the path to online success many times over.

Working All the Angles

When you get a hold of the Armand Morin’s Internet Marketing Explained, you’ll realize the reason why many other informational products don’t help you make money. We’ll give you a hint now, it’s all about having every aspect available on the Internet. Not just promoting, not just getting Opt-Ins or creating great sales letters, for more details visit to www.outsource-beginners.com but finding information on everything all packed into one product.

One of his main remarks is that people who are selling things online do so one part at a time. Why not, after we thought about it, it’s just more money their pocket anyways. However, with Armand Morin’s Internet Marketing Explained you get it all according to his sales page. So for one price you will learn the ins and outs of the facet regarding Internet Marketing and everything it is known to do.

Our Overall Analysis

Listen, this is really serious stuff here and if you aren’t really going to push to become successful and only do this part-time then we think you should pass on it. The information provided with Armand’s sales page alone lets us know it’s a heavy hitting product and if you’re not willing to work hard and learn everything then it’s pointless to spend the money.

Then again, you may sick and tired of spending $197 here, and $497 there (where do they come up with the $7 anyways). Over time that adds up and you’re either waiting forever for the next product to be launched or you’re getting information from several different people. Why not go and get everything from one person who by the way has a beautiful home thanks to the $45 million he’s made over about eleven years.
www.big-book-internet-marketing.com
www.achieving-liftoffs.com

While it may be unfair to blame the internet for the decrease in sales for a whole other medium, it is probably fair to say that there is some correlation between the decline in paid sales for magazines and the increasing popularity of the internet. Though magazine newsstand sales and yearly subscriptions have been declining for years the internet has provided a different way of providing information that readers may prefer.

Magazines, a much older medium, perhaps comes across as a veritable dinosaur in the so called information age. When comparing the two it is easy to see why users have flocked to the world wide web.

Magazines Are Not Free

While publishers expect you to pay anywhere from $3-$5 for a single issue of their magazine, most information on the internet can be found free of charge. There are websites, that charge users to view their content, but most information can be found free of charge if a user is willing to search. Magazine subscriptions are priced lower than ever before, as many publishers are practically giving away subscriptions. However, editors must work hard to publish a product that will compel readers to actually pay the purchase price, at a time when the ideology has changed and people believe that all information should be free.

Magazines Cannot Report News 24/7

In addition to being cost free, the internet is able to provide information as it is occurring. Most magazines are published on either a weekly or monthly basis. News magazines in particular have a hard time competing as the current issue rushed to print is yesterdays news, and popular portals report news up to the very minute. By the time readers receive their magazines in the mail or purchase it from the newsstand, they may have read the same information or have seen it on the news.

The future of magazines as a medium may seem bleak. However, there are genres that have seen sales increases such as the celebrity magazines. Though the information landscape is changing there are those who steadfastly subscribe to their favorite subscriptions year after year.

Publishers have started to adapt by embracing the internet and using it as a tool to connect with existing readers and perhaps convert new readers. Magazine Subscriptions, newsstand sales, and magazine websites often work in conjunction with one another to create the complete user experience. To try and combat the existing decline of subscription sales many publishers offer unique deals and offers to their subscribers on their website as a means to get readers to subscribe. Advertising dollars generated from magazine websites have perhaps sponsored the continuous lowering of prices on print subscriptions.

It is difficult to say how the internet will continue to affect other mediums, but the information landscape is continuing to evolve.

While it may be unfair to blame the internet for the decrease in sales for a whole other medium, it is probably fair to say that there is some correlation between the decline in paid sales for magazines and the increasing popularity of the internet. Though magazine newsstand sales and yearly subscriptions have been declining for years the internet has provided a different way of providing information that readers may prefer.

Magazines, a much older medium, perhaps comes across as a veritable dinosaur in the so called “information age.” When comparing the two it is easy to see why users have flocked to the world wide web.

Magazines Are Not Free

While publishers expect you to pay anywhere from $3-$5 for a single issue of their magazine, most information on the internet can be found free of charge. There are websites, that charge users to view their content, but most information can be found free of charge if a user is willing to search. Magazine subscriptions are priced lower than ever before, as many publishers are practically giving away subscriptions. However, editors must work hard to publish a product that will compel readers to actually pay the purchase price, at a time when the ideology has changed and people believe that all information should be free.

Magazines Cannot Report News 24/7

In addition to being cost free, the internet is able to provide information as it is occurring. Most magazines are published on either a weekly or monthly basis. News magazines in particular have a hard time competing as the current issue rushed to print is yesterdays news, and popular portals report news up to the very minute. By the time readers receive their magazines in the mail or purchase it from the newsstand, they may have read the same information or have seen it on the news.

The future of magazines as a medium may seem bleak. However, there are genre’s that have seen sales increases such as the celebrity magazines. Though the information landscape is changing there are those who steadfastly subscribe to their favorite subscriptions year after year.

Publishers have started to adapt by embracing the internet and using it as a tool to connect with existing readers and perhaps convert new readers. Magazine Subscriptions, newsstand sales, and magazine websites often work in conjunction with one another to create the complete user experience. To try and combat the existing decline of subscription sales many publishers offer unique deals and offers to their subscribers on their website as a means to get readers to subscribe. Advertising dollars generated from magazine websites have perhaps sponsored the continuous lowering of prices on print subscriptions.

It is difficult to say how the internet will continue to affect other mediums, but the information landscape is continuing to evolve.

An increasing number of business entities are actively using blogs as part of their marketing strategy. Why? Blogging is providing them the ability to connect with their audience thus encouraging goodwill which in turn helps bring sales.

Marketing through Blogging

It is nothing you have not heard for quite some time now. Blogging has caused quite a stir. It has, in fact, continued to proliferate rapidly. In early days, a blog is just a personal online diary. It is a place to publish one’s thoughts, to collect and share things that one finds interesting. It is a venue to express one’s rants, raves and musings. Today, professional and amateur journalists, political pundits, business honchos, entertainers, everybody seems to be blogging. Blogs are now being used to promote a business, run a political campaign, elicit publicity, among others.

A blog or weblog is an online diary of events arranged in reverse chronological order. The author of a blog is known as a blogger and writing or maintaining a blog is referred to as blogging. An individual entry or article is called a post and is available in the form of a blog page for the public to read. A blog may have a commentary box for readers to leave comments or opinions. These comments act as stimulus for further conversations. A business or corporate blog is simply a blog about a specific business. It is an effective medium for communicating with current and potential customers to share knowledge and expertise and foster relationships.

A company that employs a well-planned blogging strategy can spur significant market gains and sales earnings. Marketing is not just promoting a product or service. More importantly, it is about understanding the needs and wants of customers and developing products or services that satisfy these needs and wants effectively.

A blog enables a company to reach out to current and potential customers, in a more personal way. A blog builds connection and links between the company and its key audience which helps the company use this network over time to improve overall business. A business blog especially if regularly updated can inform readers about a company product or service, information, industry news, tips, tutorials or company developments. Links to industry-related stories can also be found in a blog. The way the targeted audience responds to these information or content is important to any company.

A blog is a good venue for customers to air issues, concerns and give comments. Through a blog, customers can give their own inputs. A company can hear directly from customers and understand what they desire to get from a product or service. Sometimes, the most well-intentioned product under perform because of lack of customer feedback. With blogging, a company can ask for feedbacks, albeit not the whole world, but at least the blogging community. Once a company has insights into what a large community thinks of the product or service, the company can then further improve the product or service to meet customer requirements. After all, customer satisfaction is of utmost importance.

A company who listens and responds to customer feedbacks conveys the message that there is somebody who listens behind an otherwise faceless company. Because a blog is conversational, it gives the company a human voice.

This assures customers that there is a “real” person who will take care of their needs. Customers will feel an affinity with the company. Regular visits brought about by regular updates thru fresh blog entries will familiarize the customers with the company and make them feel that they personally know the company. In due time, trust and loyalty is built and relationships fostered. As we all know people generally buy products or avail the services of people they know and trust. Rest assure that return visits to the blog, maybe for more information will transpire even after a purchase has been made. As they say, customer loyalty is the end-all-be-all of marketing.

A company that utilizes customer ideas, feedbacks, and opinions can further satisfy customer needs and wants and thus facilitates goodwill in the blogging community. It is standard practice in blogging to provide a link to a thought originator which is important because backlinks are a method for search engines to rank a blog. Search engine ranking is very important. Google and Yahoo are two of the most popular search engines.

A blog is typically written daily thus the blog post is new. The search engines index the new post more often than the regular website. The result is a high rank compared to a website. If a company has a product to promote and publishes blog posts about the product regularly, chances are one of the blog posts will be found by readers who may be looking for information about the product. Hopefully, after reading the blog post, the potential customer will visit the company website and make a purchase online or buy the product in a “brick and mortar” store. Marketers acknowledge that potential customers can be customers once they find the information they want about a product from the company’s blog.

Another feature of a blog why search engines love it is a blog’s high number of incoming links. Bloggers link to other blogs, articles and websites. The reading audience is exposed to a plethora of information. Bloggers, thus, create and retain a loyal following of readers. PageRanks for blogs are usually very strong too. As you and I know, high search engine ranking translates to high traffic and more sales leads.

Generating Sales from Blogging

The way to get the most from blogging is by building a strong brand. A brand is simply value for the customer. It is good customer service and products or services that will satisfy customer needs and wants. A blog can help a company demonstrates its expertise in its industry or field. Blogs do create buzz about a company’s authority in its niche. A blog connects a company to its target audience and peers and starts a more dynamic conversation with the marketplace. A blog helps to show a company’s value, its online brand on the web. Once a company has built a strong brand, sales will just follow.

Publishing a blog will not automatically generate higher sales. However, it is an efficient way to communicate with customers and prospects. A blog in itself is an excellent tool to support a business, provide value, build relationships and establish brand and image. The ultimate purpose of a blog is to brand, to communicate and to connect. Increased sales should only be viewed as a positive indirect effect of a successful blog.

Some website owners are more frustrated about Google optimization than for other search engines. They feel it is harder to perform search engine optimization for Google.
 
Whether you are making direct sales from your website or sales lead generation (or both), optimizing for Google doesn’t need to be that hard.
 
In fact, in time you may find it easier to perform SEO for Google than for other search engines.
 
 
Remember that Google is Much Smarter than the other Search Engines
 
 
Since Google is more intelligent, you have to treat them differently.
 
If you’re trying to spam them, their intelligence is going to be a problem for you. If you’re playing by the rules and providing valuable content for searchers, then you should have no problem.  
 
What Google wants is valuable content that satisfies their users’ search queries. They want searchers to find what they’re looking for, not clicking the back button quickly, but who stay on the sites they visit.
 
There are some in the SEO community who believe time your visitors spent on your site is one of the calculations Google uses right now in their algorithm to assign organic rankings.
 
Whether this is the case or not is really irrelevant: we should all want to deliver quality content that meets our searchers query, keeps them on our sites and that leads to a conversion, a sale or sales lead generation.
 
 
Are You Optimizing for Yahoo! Search and Live Search, too? 
 
 
With Yahoo! Search and Live Search (formerly MSN) you need to have the keyword phrase you optimize for on the page. There may be some exceptions, but this is a solid rule to follow.
 
The order of the keywords makes a difference with them, too.
 
As an example, with Google, Blue Widget and Widget Blue are treated the same way. Not so with Yahoo! and Live, they are treated as completely different search phrases.
 
Given the very high market share that Google has, you may want to just optimize for Google and not Yahoo! or Live. After all, depending on whose numbers you’re looking at, Google’s market share is basically 60% to 70% of all U.S. searches!
 
(And there are hundreds of other much smaller search engines, with such small market shares that they aren’t normally worth worrying about.)
 
But if you decide to also optimize for Yahoo! Search and for Live Search, then you will likely have to create more pages, to cover all your keyword phrases.
 
So, as you create more pages for your keywords, you clutter up the Internet, unless those pages are really unique, valuable content.
 
And then there is that duplicate content filter that Google has…you don’t want to run afoul of that.
 
If you do optimize for the other engines, unless the additional content is very unique, you might be advised to keep Google out of those pages (using your robots.txt file).
 
 
Knowing that Google is More Intelligent, How do We Optimize Differently for Google?
 
 
With Google’s use of LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing), your pages do NOT actually have to contain the keyword phrase(s) you’re optimizing for. But your pages had better contain words strongly related to your chosen keyword phrases. 
 
In fact, it is common to see high ranking pages where the keyword phrase isn’t in any of the HTML tags and where it also isn’t in the page text, either. Common keyword density numbers for top ranking pages in Google range from 30% all the way down to 0% keyword density.
 
Why is this and how do we benefit performing Google optimization? 
 
Google is smart enough to understand similar words and phrases (now is when we get to use that word Synonym from English class). Thus, the actual keyword phrase doesn’t have to be on the page. But words related to the same theme as your keyword phrases need to be on the page.
 
But if our keywords don’t actually have to be on the page for Google to understand the page is about our subject (our keyword phrases), how does Google make that determination?
 
 
Off-Page SEO is the Key to Your Google Optimization and to Your Sales Lead Generation 
 
 
The links from other websites to your Web pages and what these links say about your pages is the KEY to optimizing for Google. Remember, links need to be pointed towards your interior pages, not just to your home page.
 
And those links need anchor text.
 
Anchor text is the wording that people click on to go to your Web page, when the actual link doesn’t show your website url (and file name, if going to an interior page).
 
Anchor text tells Google (and to a lesser degree, other search engines) what your Web page is about.
 
Even if the actual keyword phrases aren’t used on your page, the theme of the page text should match the anchor text pointed to that page. You want the wording to be compatible and complimentary.
 
You don’t want to confuse Google as to your pages’ themes. That can cause real problems.
 
 
Quantity Versus Quality
 
 
When considering links to your Web pages, quantity is important. You will have to research your competition to give you an idea as to the number of links you may need.
 
Two tools you can look into are SEO Elite and OptiLink. You can Google both. 
 
But MUCH more important is the quality of your links. The better quality your links, the fewer you will need versus your competition.
 
Part of how you can evaluate quality of potential links to your site is that site’s home page Google Page Rank.
 
Now, Google Page Rank is on a page-basis, not a site-wide basis. But the home page Page Rank can tell you if Google considers that site to be an “authority site”.
 
You can install the free Google toolbar if you haven’t already and activate the Page Rank feature. While the information is literally months old, it’s the easiest way to view a page’s Page Rank.
 
You want some links to your site from websites with a home page Google Page Rank of at least 5.
 
One thing you do want to watch: Don’t have to high a percentage of your links containing the same anchor text. Aim for no more than 50% of your anchor text to any page being the same exact anchor text.  
 
 
Wrapping it Up
 
 
For effective Google optimization, start by pointing enough quality links to your Web pages. One-way links are much more effective than reciprocal links, where you link back to the site that has linked to you.
 
Stay away from triangulated or 3-way links schemes. This is where site A links to site B which in turn links to site C. This is a “no-no” which Google can catch and will penalize for.
 
Use your keywords as anchor text for your links. Hold down the percentage…don’t have 70% of your links to one page using the same exact anchor text!
 
Even if you don’t have the keyword phrases on your page, you can still have top rankings, as long as your links’ theme matches your Web page content those links are aimed at.
 
Following this strategy, you can also optimize your pages for more than one keyword phrase. And without creating dozens and dozens of junk pages, just to cover all your keywords.
 
You’ll be able to increase your online sales and your sales lead generation, more easily. 
 
I’ll be following up shortly with another article, with a specific checklist sharing how I structure my link campaigns for maximum results.