You're done putting together your website. Now, all of that valuable traffic is just waiting to come to your site. You've made sure to dot all the i's and cross all the t's, and you've done everything by the book to get the word out. You wear a path in your carpet by walking back and forth. In between walking, you check your server logs, hoping for a sudden increase in visitors. In reality, unless you're a big business with a huge advertising budget, the days of huge traffic jumps are a long way off. Is there something I can do while I wait for traffic from search engines?
In point of fact, there is. But this type of free website promotion doesn't make the news, and you don't have to install any software or use any backdoor tricks to get into the search engines. It's also completely free. What's that?
Now, before I tell you this trick, I want you to promise that you won't touch the delete button and that you'll let me explain it. Promise? O.K. "Posting to Forums" is the method. You can expect at least a couple hundred visitors in the first few days of "Going Live." This won't be much compared to how much you'll learn if you let the people in these forums review your site. You can then make any changes you need to before search engines crawl your site. Having experienced marketers look over your site for free, well, let's just say, "You Can't Beat The Price."
If you've never been to a forum or posted there. Don't let fear stop you. These people are just like you and me. Just a group of people with similar interests who want to get answers to their questions or give answers to questions that others have asked. Usually on a certain subject or subjects.
As a side note, make sure you read the rules for posting before you post. Read some of what people are writing. Stay on topic, and you'll figure it out quickly.
Once you get the hang of it, you won't want to go telling every forum you come across about your new site. This is called "Board Spam," and it is a big no-no. There are some boards that will let you post like this, but in general, you should stay on topic and wait for a good time to slip in your announcement. Sometimes you say it right out, and sometimes it's in your signature.
It's easy to find forums that meet your needs. Just type "forums" into your preferred search box. From there, you can narrow your search. Check the list of sites to see if they meet your needs, and then go from there.
As a new member, you should keep your first posts easy to understand. Don't forget to be polite. Be polite and friendly, and always give the impression that you are a business professional. Just ask them to look at your site when the time is right. You'll get a pretty good mix of both positive and negative feedback. Don't get upset because someone posted what you think is a negative comment. Don't forget that you asked them to look at your site. Get ready for everyone to say something. Most people in these forums are there to help. But sometimes you'll meet people who don't seem to have anything nice to say about anything or anyone. Take all of the "Buffet Style" comments. Take what you need and leave what you don't.
Before you ask to have your site looked at, you might want to look at one or two other members' sites and give them some feedback. This will teach you something useful. You can use what you think is wrong with someone else's site to fix what you think is wrong with yours. When looking for a site to check out, look for a post that has few or no comments. By replying to their post, you're more likely to get them to visit your site if you ask them to do so in your post. This method might seem sneaky, but it does work. Just don't make it a habit to do things this way.
You won't get a lot of traffic from forums, but you will have used an effective way to promote your site, and all of these ways need to be used together. "You don't need to get it right, you just need to get it going," has been said by someone other than me. You will have "Indeed Got It Going" if you do all of the above.
Forums are a great place to meet new people and talk to people who are mostly trying to do the same things we are. So "Posting to Forums!" will keep things going.
