Vietnam Urban Forum

Archive for March, 2009

“Forums are the best way to hold online discussions and share one’s views and interests. These discussions can relate to any topics such as fashion, politics, games, relationships, etc. Internet forums that dates back to the year 1995 is achieving worldwide popularity as it gives the sense of an online community that can solve your problems and in turn, you can solve theirs. Hence, these forums are also known as discussion groups, bulletin boards, etc., where one can post their queries or solutions in order to help the other members of the community. Now, forums are evolving into a marketing tool that is aimed for making profits.

Sometimes, the whole objective of setting up a forum is put in jeopardy when the members engage themselves in fights and arguments. Hence, forums always ask the members to adhere to netiquette, i.e., proper net etiquettes. Forums can be used as an advantage to make profits for any business, if utilized properly. Many webmasters use forums as a catalyst to boost their Internet business by generating the traffic to their website. The following tips can be used to maximize profits using forums:

• Identify your Customers: It is obvious that your products or services aim at targeting a specific audience. You are required to identify your customers and match your products according to their needs. Once you have established that, the next thing in your list should be to satisfy your customer’s demands.

• Search for your Interests: Once you have joined a forum, pick a community that relates closely to your business. If your business deals with hydraulics, join a community that is interested in customized cars like low-riders or heavy-duty equipments. This would help you a lot for boosting your business and thereby help in increasing the profits.

• Be an Expert in your field: For satisfying your customer’s demands, you need to be the master of your trade. Always provide expertise to your customers whenever they need it. It means, if your company deals with car spare parts, you are required to know everything about the spare parts, the companies that manufacture them, different brands in the market, etc.

• Advertise: There are forums that do not allow providing links in the forum postings. However, if you start searching the web for the forums that allow such links, you will find many that do. The next step would be to advertise your business. When you add your postings to the forum solving a customer’s query, end your posting by providing a link to your website suggesting that there is more information on your site. This would be an ideal way for generating traffic to your website.

• Submit articles: Some forums allow you to submit articles. Take full advantage of these tools to write about your business, the various products and services offered, etc.

• Join many Forums: Don’t limit yourself to just one forum. Join as many forums as you can with a view to spread the word of your business on every forum. The more forums you join, the more people you interact with, the more traffic you are able to generate for your site.

The strategy of using forums for your advantage doesn’t involve any risks, unlike your other business strategies. The only thing to remember here is not to go ahead advertising your business as soon you join a forum. Get to know your members first. Knowing their likes, dislikes, etc. will help you to connect with the customers on a more personal level which then helps them to develop trust in you.

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Forum meant a public square or marketplace in Roman Empire that was the assembly place for judicial

activity and public business.

Dictionary defines forum as public meeting place for open discussion.

Internet forums had the same objective of discussion on various topics when they were started. But now they are also good and effective marketing channels.

A place where crowd gathers would sooner or later become a marketplace.

Web forums, message boards, discussion boards, discussion groups, discussion forums, bulletin boards are the synonyms that are often used for forums.

By definition, internet forum is a web based application that is used for holding discussion on user generated content.

Forums are not a new thing to web. Since basic objective of web was communication, forums came into existence quite early. Earlier forums had simple structure and functionality.

From historical point of view, forums have become quite evolved.

Because forum users often visit the forum regularly, discuss matters, they get to know each other and sense of community develops.

A forum would typically consist of forum administrator(s), moderators and users who are also called members. A forum is generally divided into several sub forums. Depending upon the access granted a user may use all or few of them.

When you go to a forum, you would need to open an account which is usually free. A few forums however have paid access. So you would need to check.

After you register, you become a registered member of the forum and allowed to post content and ask questions if you need to.

A forum is a community indeed. You would find different level of users. There would be newbies and there would be old guns who are generally very much respected in the community.

A forum administrator is the top in the ladder. Forum administrator typically has the power to edit, delete, move or modify any thread on the forum, change major software items, change global skins, modify the board, and ban, delete, or create members.

Moderators have few of these powers including editing, deleting, and moving threads, mass pruning, warning members for offences, and changing minor forum details. Usually there are more than one moderators who are chosen from the users.

Forums are present all over the net and almost in each niche. You can search for the list of forums in your niche in your favorite search engine.

Each forum has its own set of rules and guidelines which you need to abide by when you use that forum.

It is good step to join a forum. You would find answer to the problems you face and would build a rapport with your fellow members.

This in long run would prove quite productive for your business.

Ranking highly in the search engine results is very important in generating high traffic to your website/blog. In addition to having good, relevant content on your site one of the best ways to increase your search ranking is to get high quality backlinks to your site.

A backlink is simply a clickable link that directs to another website (yours). The most powerful backlinks are one-way backlinks. One way backlinks are best; these are when a site links to your site but you don‘t reciprocally link back to them.

Putting backlinks in forums is a great way to go about doing this. These links can generate direct traffic to your site, as people browsing the forum click your links in addition to raising your search engine ranking. You need to be careful when using forums in this way. Do it wrong and you will be branded a spammer and most likely get your forum account closed. If done properly however, it can be a powerful and easily used tools to add to your repertoire.

Locate Forums Relating To Your Niche:

“Relating to your niche“ is the key term!. You want to be sure to find forums related to your niche – the topic of your website. Probably the easiest way to do this is to type in your niche into Google with the word “forum” after it. Let’s say you have a blog on healthy living. You’d type into Google “Healthy Living Forum”, or something similar.

There are two basic reasons why you want to find forums that actually relate to your niche.. First, the search engines will usually give more weight to links pointing to your site if they come from sites centred around the same niche as your site. Secondly, you are far more likely to come across parties that are interested in your site by placing it in the appropriate forums.

Join The Best Forums:

After finding the forums you want, you need to  decide on which ones you should join. Click the links to visit about half a dozen of the top search results. You can usually browse through forums without having to sign up, only when you actually want to participate, do you need to join. If you land on a forum that won’t let you view unless you join, forget it and move on.

Its only really worth your while to join popular forums so take a look at how many members there are in each forum you visit. You also need to make sure those members are active. Go into one of the more popular forums categories and scan down the list of threads to see when the last posting was made. This information is usually in the right hand column of the forum threads table. If you see a lot of posts made in the last 24 hours, you’ve found a forum with lots of active members. A popular forum like this will attract the search engines and therefore your links will be picked up quite quickly. Search engines tend to love sites with lots of frequently updated, relevant content. This is the ideal type of forum.

The last important step before joining a forum is to make sure that it allows you to add a “signature” to all of your posts. Jump into one of the more popular threads on the forum. Scroll down and look at the posts to see if anyone has a signature showing at the bottom of their post. There will usually be a horizontal line after the body of the post and some text and/or links underneath it. Often people just have a quote or witty saying, but sometimes they will have links as well. Not everyone will have a signature, but try to find some members who do. Signatures are crucial, because this is where you are going to put the links to your site.

When you find a forum that fit’s the bill, follow the steps to sign up. You only need to find a few to begin with, you can always find more later on 

Your Signature:

Log in to the forum. Once there go to your profile. Often this will be called ‘User CP’ or ‘User Profile’. In this area you can edit things like your avatar, your bio and preferences. Look for the part that says something like ‘Edit signature’ and click that. You’ll see a text field where you can type in the text you want to appear beneath all your posts. This is where you’ll put the backlinks to your site.

Forums use a special kind of code to allow members to format their posts. It’s called BBCode and it’s quite simple to use once you get the hang of it. Copy the examples below and change the URL and text to your URL and some catchy keyword-rich text. Paste the code into you signature box and save it.

Link to your website or blog with this code:

Learn how to start [url=http://www.onestep4income.net]Coin Collecting[/url] the easy way.

You can see in the code above where you need to edit the domain to be your domain. In this example, ‘Coin Collecting’ will be the anchor text for the link. This is where you want to put your keywords. Almost all forums will allow you to have a link in your signature.

If you want to make your signature bold, just add the bold tags around it like this:

[b]Learn how to start [url=http://www.onestep4income.net]Coin Collecting[/url] the easy way.[/b]

Most forums will allow you to bold the text in your signature. If you add the bold code and your signature still doesn’t come out in bold then it’s you know the bold formatting is not allowed.

Some forums will also allow you to change the color of the text, although the anchor text will come out as the default link color, usually blue. Here’s how you change the text color:

[color=red]Learn how to start [url=http://www.onestep4income.net]Coin Collecting[/url] the easy way.[/color]

You can also combine formatting. This would make your signature red and bold (except for the link text which will usually be blue bold).

[color=red][b]Learn how to start [url=http://onestep4income.net]Coin Collecting[/url] the easy way.[/b][/color]

One final tip for creating your signature. Less is more. If you make your signature look spamming people will treat you like a spammer. You don’t have to use up all available lines in your signature. Make it short, sweet and to the point. If you post great content and people are interested they will click your link.

Step 4: Participate!

The first three steps were all preparation. Now you get to start creating backlinks to your site! It’s simple, just participate in the forum. Post good content, ask questions. Try to help people out by answering questions. Be nice, be helpful.

Every post you make will give you a backlink to your site. The higher the quality of your post, the more powerful your backlink will be, at least in Google. Because Google looks at the text surrounding a link to determine the relevancy of a link having good content in your posts is much more valuable than having a post that says something like, “great post, I agree”. If you simply participate in the forum and try to be friendly and helpful chances are your content will take care of itself.

That’s it. Have fun. And remember, you can change your signature any time you want. You might change the text a bit from time to time to find out what generates the most clicks to your site.

Use This Method To Build A Powerful Residual Income With A Legitimate Online Business