Niche Marketing Through Blogs and Forums

Growing traffic for niche websites can be done through two means: direct marketing and organic growth. While organic niche marketing takes more time, it tends to earn free or inexpensive traffic and boosts search engine rankings. Organic traffic consists of people who search for a topic and end up at your site but also can include people who link to the site through substantive blog and forum comments.

Finding Blogs and Forums

Finding the best blogs and forums for your niche marketing site simply requires a bit of searching. Try using a search engine and looking for “forum” and the topic of your niche marketing site. Several newer search engines, such as Technorati, are available specifically for searching for blogs. Google also now has a blog search option.

Take a few minutes to read through the blogs and forums you find. Determine if they are similar in content to your site and whether they would be likely to draw traffic through your niche marketing efforts. All marketing time and money are limited; be sure you are spending yours in the best way possible.

Commenting on Blogs and Forums

Some forums will not allow signatures, and you want to stay away from them. Almost all blogs allowing comments will permit readers to hotlink their names on the forum post. Once you have set up with signature links and a linked name, you can begin to make comments. These comments should be substantive. While the occasional “I agree” is fine, try to make sure you are presenting information that will help others. People will be more likely to click on your signature or name if they believe you are offering something good to the discussion.

Limiting Time Spent

Remember that your aim in commenting is your niche marketing campaign. You can very easily get caught up in the discussions going on and spend significant time at the sites just reading and commenting. At some point, you are spending free time there, rather than marketing time. The easiest way to limit your time is to have a set goal for number of comments and posts per day. Once you have reached that limit, return to other niche marketing tasks to keep yourself from spending unnecessary time on other blogs and forums.

Evaluating Success

Using a site statistics program, determine how often people are linking from a site to yours. Readers of some blogs are more likely to click links, and there is no real rhyme or reason to it. Instead you will need to monitor to determine which blogs and forums are worth your time and which ones you should abandon as effective marketing tools. Track not only the links but the amount of time those users stay on your site and whether they leave through ads, go to multiple pages, or seem really interested in what you have to offer.

Just try to keep in mind that your goal in commenting is to present yourself as a member of the community with knowledge to share. Allow that to guide your postings.