Build Traffic With Forums: 6 Key Forum Characteristics

Forums are a brilliant way to promote your blog or website.  But, you must promote yourself, and your blog, in the right way.  Forums are communities of like minded people with strong similar interests. When you join a forum you are joining a community. In general, long term forum members are very protective of their community and view new members suspiciously. Primarily new members are viewed suspiciously due to over-zealous marketers attempting to game forums by spamming them.

DO NOT TRY TO GAME FORUMS. You will be quickly banned. Become an active member and add value to the forum. Once you are seen as a valued member traffic will flow from the forum to your blog. But, before then, participating in forums is about building relationships; not links, not traffic, just relationships. Above all else who you know and how you are viewed by other elite forum members will dictate your success at the forum.

Forums are best used for networking and building relationships. If you gain traffic from forum participation then that is icing on the cake. The relationships you develop from participating in forums can be far more valuable than any traffic you may receive.

There are thousands of forums. Find and choose a few good niche forums to participate in. To find a niche forum just use the search engine of your choice and search for "keyword + forum (online forum, internet forum, chat, etc)." You could also use Big Boards to find some of the biggest and most trafficked online forums on the internet.

Skellie of Skelliewag.org wrote a guest post at Problogger.net, "Build Your Blog With Forum Traffic." The post is a great outline of the potential use of online forums and how to leverage that potential. Mohsin of Blogginbits.com in "How To Use Forums To Drive Traffic To Your Blog," talks about different ways you can drive traffic to your blog using forums. But what makes a good forum? How do you choose which forum to participate in? The key to successfully using forums is knowing how to choose the right forum for you and your blog.

Here are a few characteristics to keep in mind when choosing a forum.

1. Membership Size: Bigger is not always better. Sometimes its better to be a big fish in a little pond. But, be careful with smaller forums. Smaller forums are often more intimate. Smaller, more intimate groups are usually more tight knit. With a smaller forum, it can be more difficult to become a respected member.
2. Active Member Participation: Members actively responding to other members is a good sign of a strong open community. If there are a lot of forum posts that have heavy viewership but few responses, this could be a sign of a closed clickish forum. But, it could also point to a need for more active members. That is a need that you could fill.
3. Forum Traffic: Traffic is important. But, just as with a forums membership size, heavier traffic does not always mean that it is a good forum. With Internet forums as with blogs and websites its the quality of traffic that matters. A low traffic forum may have a small yet really closely knit group that once you are a member of will bear great fruit.
4. A Positive Forum Community: I know of very few people that want to be involved with a negative community. You should steer clear of forums that have a negative atmosphere. Its up to you, but, do you really want negative traffic being focused back to your blog? A negative community is one that has a lot of flame wars or particularly brutal flame wars. A community where moderators participate in this type of abuse or do not step in to extinguish the flames are not communities that I want to participate.
5. An Open Forum Community. The fastest and easiest way to tell if a forum promotes an open atmosphere is to look for the "Introduce Yourself" topic area. If few current members respond to a new member announcing themselves then it may not be a very open community. Even more telling is if and how moderators respond to new member announcements. Pay attention to even the slightest negativity in this area. reading comments here can really help you gauge the forum’s atmosphere.
6. Topics Of Interest: Obviously, if the forum does not offer topics that you are interested in or topics that you are blogging about, it is probably not the forum for you. Don’t promote your blog there. I have seen it before. All you are doing is creating a bad name for yourself.

There are a lot of great online communities. Use these 6 characteristics to help determine which online forums are worth your time. One other thing you should keep in mind. You never know who is participating in these online forums, stepping out of line, breaking forum rules, spamming, participating in flame wars, can have far reaching affects. If you are not careful you could drive traffic AWAY from your blog instead of TO your blog. Many people use pseudonyms on forums, so you never know who may be there. Remember its all about networking. Bad karma begets bad karma. Participating in forums is always a good choice for your blog promotion strategy.