Taking Advantage of Promotion Forums
Hey there, I'm going to tell you some useful tips for taking maximum advantage of promotion forums, as a lot of people only get a small percentage of what they could get from forums like this. I'll tell you all the methods I use!
SITENAME ' so members will hopefully click on that link and sign up. It will give you a backlink when the search engines browse your post as well.
' , '{WEBSITENAME} got 25 new clients today' or '{USERNAME} made an interesting post on {FORUMNAME} today'. People may see one of these statuses and hunt for the link of your website then they might decide to sign up.
SITENAME '. People who have bought your service and like it may sign up as a thanks and anyway it gets a free backlink which is always welcome.
Promotion Topic
Okay the obvious one, make a promotion topic but just making a promotion topic isn't good enough. You need to make a topic that really draws people in, a topic that makes potential users, users! Having a logo at the top is always good. Then give a general description of the site. Some statistics, staff team details, site announcements, stuff like that. Also play around with the colours, boldness,underline,centering and things like that to make it presentable. Also make sure you have decent spelling and grammar in your promotion topic, if English isn't your first then ask someone else to have a look through it.
Bumping
Okay there's no point leaving your thread to die, you've get to update as much as you can within the rules, now I will admit sometimes I go bump, please join and I really shouldn't do that. Include some new statistics, any new announcements, maybe a few of the latest threads, things like that to make your bump more interesting.
Exchanges
Sometimes it's good to exchange with other users. Do things like 10 posts for 10 posts. It's a great way to make your forum larger and if your lucky you might get a few people you exchanged with deciding they liked the forum so they carry on posting also for a potential member, the more quality content there is on the site the better.
Signature
Post your website link in your signature and maybe a logo in there, this gets you backlinks and gets you more publicity. If you don't know how to add things to your signature then here's a few things you can do.
- Code:
YOURSITENAME
- Code:
BOLDUNDERLINE
Posting Around & Getting a Good Reputation
This is a massive one that a lot of people miss. If you get a decent amount of posts and trust among the members then people are likely to want to do deals and exchanges with you and they are more likely to join your site. So make high quality posts, maybe ways to promote. Engage with members in threads like Hello/Goodbye Thread and most of all don't get into arguments with other members.
Requesting Services
To make full advantage of a promotion forum you need to request services. Save up your forum credits. I think the two crucial services are the posting package service because it gives your a forum a boost in bad times and also the review service because it highlights problems with your websites and helps you improve it which leads to more members.
Be Helpful
I've already touched on this subject previously but been helpful really does help. People love to join a forum if they know the owner is a kind and helpful person. Reply to people's promotion threads giving them constructive feedback and help people when they ask questions in sections like this one.
Affiliations
If a forum has an affiliation exchange section then use it! I know not everyone wants affiliation images plastered on their homepage but why not make a affiliations page? Your members won't be bothered if there's a little text link somewhere saying affiliations. So set up your affiliation page, make an affiliation image and head over to section's like this. What you do then is up to you. What I would do is make a post saying something like 'Hey, would you like to affiliate with {YOUR FORUM NAME HERE}. My affiliation page is here (HYPERLINK THE WORD HERE) This is my affiliation image code:
- Code:
AFFILIATIONIMAGE
Monthly Contests
Many forums run forum and site of the month contests. I would suggest entering them. There's no harm in it. It doesn't matter if you lose. Even if you lose people may still have found your site from it and signed up. However if you do win it can gain you a lot of exposure and a lot of new members. If you do win then I'd suggest mentioning it when you bump your thread.
One off Contests
Your good ol' regular contests. On promotion forums the prizes of contests are often website related so I'd suggest having a look at the prizes to see if it's something you would want for your site. If so, there is no harm in joining in with the contest. Even if you don't win it may still benefit you in other ways. If it's a posting contest then you've got more posts which means you'll be known more around the community which can lead to people viewing your advertisements and joining your site. If it's a referral contest you'll get respect from the community if you refer some members. If it's a graphic related contest then people might ask for graphics from you and you could say; 'Yeah I will do. Would you please make 5 posts at my forum as a thanks?' So there's more than meets the eye to contests.
Forum Battles
Some forums have fun little forum battles. They're quite fun to do and have benefits. First of all, what are they? Normally it is where two forums go head to head in a poll where the members of the forum were the battle is hosted vote on which forum is best. There aren't usually prizes for this except for special occasions. However some forums have a leaderboard and people looking for good communities to join or to partner with may use these leaderboards to decide as they give a general idea of popular or quality communities. Now there are other benefits. It gives you a backlink and voters may have never heard of your site before and when they check to see if they want to vote for your forum they might decide they want to sign up and post. Another benefit is sometimes you and the other contestant can decide to have prize money. This could be in the form of real money or forum credits so that will help you if you win.
Interview Threads
You may think, how does this help my website? Well it doesn't directly help but it does help in another way. An interview thread is somewhere were people can ask you questions and get to know you. Now when you first join the forum your a bit of a stranger so sometimes people don't pay much attention to you but if you start an interview thread people will get to know you better and they then might decide to go and sign up to your website. Also if your the one asking the questions you might find someone is a big fan of Call of Duty. Now if your forum is about Call of Duty you could ask them if they would be interested in joining your Call of Duty community or you could even ask them if they are interested in working for your Call of Duty forum so I hope I've convinced you that interview threads are worth it.
Premium Membership
For those of you with spare cash hangin' around then premium membership is a good way to take advantage of a promotion forum. You may think it's money wasted. Premium Membership is a group which you have to pay to get in that have special benefits and usually a coloured username. This forum has a premium membership. Now on to the advantages. The special benefits of premium memberships at promotion forums are often website related. For example this forum has 'A Sticky Sponsor ad for one week - normally sold for $5.00 on it's own.' as one of the benefits. This will give you a massive boost for one week, way more people will see your advertisement and hopefully way more people will sign up. 'Your Username in Black recognising you as a proud supporter of FP'. Having a coloured username helps more than you think. It makes you stand out. If someone is looking at a list of promotion threads they'll often go for the one's that are started by someone in a coloured username. It's just a psychological thing. Other promotion forums may have other handy benefits like a free service every month. That kind of thing.
Technical Support
Often you have a problem with your website and you rush of to your forum software support forum. However sometimes it can take a long time to get a reply so to help you with this. Some promotion/webmaster forums include a technical support section. This decreases your wait time and means you can get problems solved on your forum quicker which keeps members happy. Also answering question there can help improve your reputation and I've explained the importance of that previously.
Other Promotion Forums
Who needs Google when you've got a promotion forum? Stop searching 'promotion forums' and finding dead websites! Start using forums to find more forums. Many promotion forums have a list of advertising/promotion forums where you can find more forums to promote on. This of course leads to more members and you can use that forum to find forums that weren't listed on the first one. Another great place to look is the promotion directory where you can search through for promotion forums. Some websites help us further by sorting their promotion threads into sections so all you have to do is look through the Advertising/Services section and the Webmaster/Graphics section. You can also take a look through people's signatures as they often have promotion threads listed there.
Guides/Tutorials
You might think you know all that there is to know about websites but you don't! No one does! So it is important they look through guides/tutorials wrote by members of the community. This will help you improve your forum and learn new ways of promoting it. It also stops you making mistakes. Now if you do know a lot about forums then write your own guides. This gains you reputation on the forum and if your clever it can gain you a backlink and some members. So do this clever trick first you post your guide on your own forum then at the bottom of your post on the promotion forum you put; 'originally posted at Completing Your Profile
I've already mentioned about signatures but you should fully complete your profile. For one, it helps people get to know you when you fill in things like occupation,hobbies,interests but it gives you a bit of free advertising because usually you can put your website link in a website link field. Some forums have fields for youtube, twitter, wordpress, etc which also gives you free advertising. Also don't forget to add an avatar because it looks more friendly and sociable to have an avatar. If you want an avatar like mine, if I've changed it then it's basically a manga face, then go to Face Your Manga.
Status Updates
Unfortunately this forum does not have a status system. However some do and I'm going to tell you why to use them. Writing status updates helps people get to know you better and makes you more part of the community. You can also secretly advertise your website in a status. Now most sites will disallow putting a link to your website in your status but you can still say things like '{FORUMNAME} it 10,000 posts today ' , '{WEBSITENAME} got 25 new clients today' or '{USERNAME} made an interesting post on {FORUMNAME} today'. People may see one of these statuses and hunt for the link of your website then they might decide to sign up.
Introduce Yourself
I forget to mention this before but remember to introduce yourself when you join a forum. Most forums have an introduction section. This is the first step towards people getting to know you and building a reputation on the forum. Make sure to include a bit of information about you. Also you could include a bit of information about your site to gain user interest but do not post a link to your site in your introduction as it is against the rules of most forums.
Selling your services
Some forums have a place for real money exchanges. You can sell advertisements on your forum here. It helps generate money for you and your website and some people who purchase advertising may decide to sign up to your website as well. Now something you can do on all deals which helps you get a backlink and hopefully some members is for example your selling twitter followers at the bottom of your post you could put something like 'Supplied by Signing up to referral links
You may think how does this help in anyway whatsoever? Well wait a minute and I'll tell you. Many forums have a place advertise referral/affiliate links. Now when you sign up to these referral links the person who owns the referral link will be happy about this so why not comment saying something along the lines of 'I've signed up to your referral link, could you please sign up to my site in return?'. Now make sure to not include a link as it will probably be against forum rules. The person can easily find it in your signature. Now a lot of times they will say yes and sign up so you've got yourself a member there.
Get friends to post referral links
Ask your friends to sign up to your website and then use these referral link sections to promote your website for you within the rules. Make sure your website has a referral system first. Your friend just has to sign up to your website, copy their referral link then say something like 'I signed up to {FORUMNAME} and really enjoyed it so I've decided to recommend it but please use my referral link(hyperlink that with their referral link). Make sure your friends do this, don't make new accounts to do it yourself. It will most probably be against forum rules.
Keeping members up to date
You need to make sure members are up to date with your forums happenings. Conveniently most promotion forums have a section dedicated to your forums happenings. First make sure to read the guidelines as you don't want to be posting news that is disallowed. Then you make your topic. Give it a catchy title and in the thread make sure there's bold bits, colourful bits and pictures. Now post your news there and add a link to your website at the bottom so members can see it then sign up.
Hiring for your website
Ever waited months to find no one wanted to be a moderator for your site? Wished there was an easier way? Well there is! A lot of promotion forums have a job centre section where you can make a topic declaring that you are hiring and how to apply. Now a lot of people looking to work at websites will constantly scout this section and hopefully will decide to apply for your forum.
Completing graphic requests
If your a designer with a website then your in luck! A lot of promotion/webmaster and graphic forums have a place where users can request graphics. Now a lot of them are willing to pay a fee of either forum credits or real money but you could tell them all they have to do to get graphics from you is to sign up to your website or if your a forum, make a few posts. Many people will do this and will significantly help your website if you actively complete requests.
Selling graphics
Related to the previous section you can also sell graphics. To help your website from this what you do is for example make website design then say you'll give it to members if they make 50 posts at your forum. Now, if your design is of a good standard and would be worth real money people will often do this instead of splashing out there cash on a new design.
Requesting graphics
If your website is looking a bit tatty then save up some forum credits and request some graphics. A lot of people will make graphics for forum credits as long as you give them a reasonable amount. Over a period of time you can request a fair amount of graphics and it will improve your websites appearance greatly and will lead to new people signing up.
Using free graphics
Some forums have a section of free graphics. Often they can be found among requests and paid graphics like here at Forum Promotion. Now if you find some you like it can be really helpful because it improves your site's appearance which of course leads to, lets say it all together, new members! I bet your tired of hearing that, eh?
View new topics
If you watch new topics you can often find new sites to promote at, good deals, contests that could benefit you, interesting discussions and more so I suggest to keep looking at the new topics for anything interesting. It's just a little tip, not very important.
View active topics
If you've got your site's link in your signature and you want some quick backlinks then you should try the view active topics feature. These topics are popular and more likely to be indexed by a search engine and they are the backlinks that really count. Of course most topics should hopefully be indexed eventually but they'll be the first to be indexed and I believe the more views a topic gets the more that backlink is worth.
Signature advertising
Advertising through signatures is a fantastic way of getting backlinks and sometimes members. Even if the backlink is only up for a month or so you can only hope that google indexes some of them during that time. It's worth to pay some forum credits or even real money for this. Also if you get your site's link in a trusted member or staff member people will often click on the link and sign up as well. Forum Promotion's very own Signature Advertising is a great service because it gets your link displayed in the signatures of staff. So you get people clicking on it but staff are generally active and if Google indexes the forum at that point your going to get a lot of backlinks. You can also buy signature advertising through exchanges and the marketplace.
Profile comments
Forum Promotion like many other forums has profile comments. If there's an event, and I'll use an example of an event happening at the time of writing, Halloween, then you can say for example 'Happy Halloween!'. This helps you get to know members of the forum and remember how important getting to know members of the forum is. As a side note, in MyBB 1.8 profile comments will be inbuilt instead of a plugin.
Purchasing advertisements
If you spare cash lying around then many forums sell advertisement space. It's a fantastic way to gain massive amounts of exposure for your website. Epically if you buy advertisements on big forums like this one.
I hope I've helped you with this, it sure took a long time to write and I hope to update it in the future so please give me suggestions to write about. By the way, a lot of these things, I and others don't do to help our websites. We just do it because we like to do it. We like to get to know people, we like to get involved in the community, we like to help others. Finally, the best way to thank me for this if you liked it would be to give me a +rep, it would be greatly appreciated
