Forums – some people love them and spend hours on them, others think they are a waste of time. Are you in the latter group? If you are, perhaps it’s time to have a rethink. Search engines are returning forum threads in search results and Google have now extended search results to include a sub tab showing several threads.

Others have written on the subject and you can read about the new search results here and here.

I want to take a different angle. I want to know why forums are a waste of time when they can help to develop valuable links back to your website. More importantly, they can help to establish you as an authority for your particular niche.

The important part of that last statement was the ‘your niche’ part. I don’t recommend jumping on to every forum you come across and leaving meaningless replies to threads everywhere. That helps no one – yourself included.

Find a forum that is relevant to your niche and start communicating. Reply to questions you really do know the answers to. Acknowledge others as fellow authorities and start to build a rapport with forum members. Most forums allow you to include a link in your signature – link to a sensible page on your web site – a page you want fellow forum members to visit.

Forums can help build your authority on a particular area. This can lead to more traffic flowing through to your web pages, more links, and now, more exposure in search results. Now tell me that forums are a waste of time – they should be a part of your daily online marketing tasks.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Social Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.