A very popular way of marketing your business online is “forum marketing”.

If you don’t know, a forum is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. Generally forum messages are available to anyone on the internet to view.

The right way and the wrong way

With forum marketing there are essentially two methods – one is to become activately involved in a forum, the second is to “litter” the forum with links to your site. Unfortunately many people tend to favour the later and do their business more harm than good.

Be an expert

An extremely powerful marketing method offline is to become considered an expert. For example having your opinions quoted in a newspaper can bring a lot of potentional business to your site, builds credibility and therefore can improve your ability to promote and sell items. Forums can do the same online.

Forums are a great way of exposing your business to people within your market. If you are able to gain the respect of the forum users then it could lead to an opportunity to do business with them should the need arise.

Forums will often have people asking for help or information. This gives you an opportunity to show that you “know your stuff” by responding to these requests. Not only will the person you’re helping be impressed by your assistance, other people reading the information will also appreciate your knowledge.

Don’t be rude!

There is however a line between contributing to a forum and advertising on a forum. Forums are intended to be communities where people help one another – blatent advertising is generally frowned upon and could actually do your business more harm than good.

Going around to forums and just throwing your link around without contributing reflects badly on you. The posts are like you running around your local neighbourhood graffiti’ing your business name on people’s front fence – it’s not a good look. Unfortunately search engines don’t really care about the quality of what you write so people are still “rewarded” for these links – assumming they aren’t removed by the forum owners/administrators.

Which forum is right for you?

To find a suitable forum to contribute to, perform a search using your favourite search engine for your market plus the word “forum”, eg. “woodworking forum”. We’ve also listed some Australian IT, Webmaster & Business Forums previously.

Before joining a forum, make sure you read the forum rules and also take the time to look through the posts to get a feel for the community. Some forums can be “hostile” and may not be the right fit to associate your business with.

Getting Started

Before posting, configure your “signature” to include details of your business and/or web site. Even if a forum doesn’t provide the ability to have a link to your site, still configure a signature. Often later down the track you will have the ability to include a link and the change will generally be applied to your old posts too!

Benefits of supporting a forum

Forums will also often provide advertising opportunities. For a contribution of a prize some they may even host a competition for you to more actively promote your business to their members.

So to recap…

• the right forum will give you access to your target market
• by actively contributing and genuinely trying to assist members you will gain credibility and show your expertise
• your credibility will help you in selling your own product & services (on your own site, not on the forum!)
• as a bonus, forums can help with the search engine rankings (i.e. from signature links)

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Having a favicon is a great way gaining a little bit more attention and build your branding. Some people even suggest that having a favicon can help your search engine rankings as they believe it’s one of the indicators use by Google and other providers to determime the trustworthiness of your site.

The favicon will appear on the toolbar of your visitor’s browser, and if they bookmark your site it will also appear next to your listing in their bookmarks list.

There are two ways of implementing a favicon.

The first way was the original method, implemented by Microsoft with Internet Explorer 4. It simply involves creating a ICO graphic file and placing it in the main folder of your web site.

The second way is creating an image (in ICO, PNG, GIF or JPEG format), upload it to your site and then add the following HTML code to your pages (between the <HEAD> tags), for a PNG image:
<link rel=”icon” type=”image/png” href=”http://example.com/image.png”>
or for a GIF image:
<link rel=”icon” type=”image/gif” href=”http://example.com/image.gif”>

The second method is considered more correct (and better supported by browsers) however the simplicity of the first option can be very appealing.

With the first option it’s still recommended that you also place this line in the <HEAD> section of your HTML pages (at least your main index page):
<link rel=”shortcut icon” type=”image/x-icon” href=”/favicon.ico”>

There are a number of free favicon creators online (eg. http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/) as well as downloadable programs (eg. http://icofx.ro/). Other popular graphic applications such as Photoshop and Paint.NET also support ICO files – some will need add-ins (eg. Paint.NET requires http://www.evanolds.com/pdnicocur.html).

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Unfortunately many people see forums as a way of just gaining back links to their sites, however this is nothing more than online graffiti. Forums should be used to seek advice from like minded people, build your reputation and for networking in your particular niche market.

There are 100s of Australian Forums (with a surprising number of large car and sport forums!). Below is a list of active public Australian forums specialising in the IT, webmaster and business topics.

Affiliate Forum – http://www.affiliateforum.com.au [1,841] PR3
Aussie Tycoon – http://www.aussietycoon.com [451] PR0
Australian Business Forum – http://www.abforum.org [8,075] PR3
Australian Webmaster – http://www.australianwebmaster.com [3,584] PR3
BuilderAU Developers Forum – http://www.builderau.com.au/forum/community [unknown] PR4
CNET Australia Forums – http://forums.cnet.com.au [3,347] PR5
DN Trade – http://www.dntrade.com.au [240] PR3
Flying Solo – http://www.flyingsolo.com.au/forums [4,762] PR0
MacTalk Australia – http://www.mactalk.com.au [28,180] PR4
MacWorld Australia Forums – http://www.macworld.com.au/forums [unknown] PR3
Port80 Forums – http://forums.port80.asn.au [1,767] PR5
SEO Forum – http://www.seoforum.net.au [778] PR0
Web Hosting Talk Australia – http://www.webhostingtalk.com.au [9,682] PR3
Whirlpool – http://www.whirlpool.net.au [331,892] PR5

Note: the number in []’s indicates number of members at time of collating this list.

In addition to the above forums you should always try to find forums in your particular market niche, and you don’t even need to restrict yourself to Australia. Simply perform a search for “<your market niche> forum” and see what you can find.

If there are any relevant forums we missed, please let us know in the comments.

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