Forum Traffic - 6 Steps for Driving Forum Traffic to Your Website

Forums are an excellent, and absolutely free source for driving traffic. It is a relatively easy thing to do, and if done properly like I'm about to show you then you'll yield awesome results. In this article I'll go over how to easily find and target your forums, finding out who the big players are and what people like to read, making a positive first impression to make yourself an instant buzz-topic, how to answer peoples' questions effectively, creating an click-attracting signature, and how to really ramp up traffic with a rare kind of forum post. This is one arguably one of the best ways to build you email list, and build a readership for your blog.

Step 1. Find your forum(s) - in actuality, you will only need 1 but having 3 instead is recommended. You'll want to have a large presence on one forum, and having an awareness built on other ones. To find your forum, then go do a search for: (your niche) + forum ie blogging forum, or gardening forum on your favourite search engine.
You want to make sure you have the biggest forum, or the most targeted. If you feel like going with the big forum will be best, go with that one. If you find another forum that's almost as big, but as people in your specific topic then it can't hurt to join them either - it's up to you.

Step 2. Forum Research - Look through the posts, and see how many posts people have. See their reputation scores, as most forums have, and if they look reputable. Why are they successful? Study them - they're your new role models. You also want to find which posts have the most responses, and what makes people excited (make sure you look for the specific titles, as well)!

Step 3. Your Introduction Post - You want to have something that says, "Hi, I'm pretty good and I thought I could help some people out. I joined this forum because ---" you get the idea. The secret to pulling this off is complete honesty, and not being a jerk and trying to sell them something or manipulate them. You're just making yourself known.

Step 4. Start Participating - This is where people will start taking a larger notice of you, and you'll have your posts everywhere. You should approach this as a "Well, this is how I'd solve it" kind of attitude. Be honest, and give great value - hold nothing back. If you can explain yourself quickly, that's great. But if you need to give a larger explanation - then give one!

Step 5. Add Your Eye-Catching Signature - Wonder why we didn't add this first? Well, first you gave value and then you start doing this. It's like letting people know you know what you're doing before-hand, then letting them praise you with a click. And remember how you started participating? Well - now you have your signature everywhere. Enjoy it.

Step 6. Start an Info-Thread - This rare kind of post isn't done by a lot of people. You should love doing this because it's the real traffic-generator. I give massive versions of these, and if you're a blogger, this would be like having "link-bait." It's basically a big, huge thing where you give tons of information and everybody takes notice.

You could prove the 10 greatest carrot-growing tips, for example. Whatever you know how to do - show it off.

Tips and tricks:

Be humble
Respond to every response
Be very generous - you don't need to give away everything, but provide value for people