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There is no doubt about the fact that Forum posting works when it comes to driving traffic to a site. On many occasions, I have successfully used posting to forums to gain exposure to my affiliate landing page, squeeze page, sales page, etc.

I tell you, if you’re really smart, the goal of every forum post you make is to get as many people to subscribe to your list! Posting to forums is a very fast and powerful way to build your base of subscribers in as little as 30 minutes. Below is a step-by-step guide:

Step 1 – Find Forums About Your Niche Very Easily

Just Google the following:

+”your niche” +forum

or

+“your niche”+”discussion board”

For instance, if I am looking for Forums in the Internet Marketing field, I type +”Internet Marketing”+forum. The results show the top Internet marketing Forums.

Step 2 – Join the Forums and Set Up Your Signature

Remember to include your website address in your signature. Signature is another name for your resource box. Your resource box is just like an ‘about the author info’. This appears at the end of every post you make and drives traffic to your website.

Step 3 – Read the Rules and Regulations of the Forum before Posting

This ensures that your posts are not deleted by the Administrators of the Forum. Now, don’t go about spamming all members of the Forum with your website advert. In fact, I will advise you not to post an obvious ad. It’s a pure waste of time because it will be deleted.

So, what’s next?

Step 4 – Ask for Input

Approach from a weak man’s position. Assuming you’ve written an article on your site entitled “13 Ways to Drive Traffic to a New Site.” You could make a post asking folks to check out the article and see if you missed anything. Or you can ask for additional points to add to your article. Of course you’ll have your opt in box at the end of the article with a compelling offering.

Let’s say you’ve written an article on meeting the right partner. You could post a message like this: “If you had a chance to learn how to meet your right partner now, what would you do?”

It’s a great way to get the attention of forum members to your article. You also get them engaged in the article by asking for their input. And who knows, you may also get other publishers who would use your content in their ezines, thereby getting more exposure for your site.

Step 5 – Ask for a Critical Assessment

If you are the type that is not easily hurt by honest feedback even when it hurts, you can go to a forum and ask for a honest critique. You may think this will not make people sign up for your list, but I tell you, many people will end up subscribing to it. It’s a more indirect and acceptable way to ask people to check out your site without blatant advertising.

Plus, the feedback they give you may help to make your squeeze page even more compelling. Ask them if it would persuade them to give it a try, assuming they were in your target market (of course, you already know they are by the forum you selected). And, if they say no, ask them why. You can get valuable information on what they want (and don’t want) this way.

There are two types of forums where you should ask for critiques: the niche forum itself and a marketing forum. You’ll likely get more sign-ups from the niche forum and good advice to test out from the marketing forum (although you’ll get some opt-ins there as well).

Step 6 – Ask Your Target Market What They Want

Unknown to most people; this is one of the best ways to develop products and services. And most times, Forum members are ready to tell you what they’ll buy and give you ideas for articles, auto-responder content and your blog posts, whatever you need. People guess the products their target market will want and create them only to discover no one is interested in the product, but with this approach, you have real people telling you what product they want, how they want it and how much they are prepared to pay for it.

The way you would use this technique to get them to subscribe is to post something like, “what’s your biggest question about loosing weight?” Or “what’s the single most important thing you’d like to know about building a business?”

Don’t forget to ask if they’re willing to pay for solutions to their problems and have them give you an indication of how much they would be willing to pay. Powerful stuff!

Let them know you’ve already answered 10 questions (your 10 step mini-course loaded in your auto-responder), for example. Then they’ll be more likely to sign-up. Make sure you point out that you’ll add to your mini-course with the answers to the questions they’ve provided, and that they’ll get answers to the existing questions in your mini-course PLUS the new ones when they subscribe. Everybody wins!

Step 7 – Provide a Step-By-Step Guide or Video Tutorial

If someone asks how to create an eBook, give them a progression of steps they can take. Or, make a tutorial video showing them how. Now that you’ve got them to your site, you’ll want to “make them a proposal they can’t refuse.”

Provide a List of Resources and Websites

In addition to checklists, resource lists with website URLs make a great site for them to bookmark! Make sure you supply more than just links. Make it a huge info-page of information. A collection of resources, links to everything you have – articles, video, audio, your blog, other useful sites, tools, you name it.

Solve a Problem for People

If someone asks for help or asks a question, provide your experience and try to help them. But to maximize your odds of getting both the asker of the question and everyone else who reads the post to subscribe to your list, try to phrase your answer in one of the following two ways:

1. Give them tips, techniques, shortcuts, secrets, or anything that offers both the promise of exclusive information and fast results. A shortcut to success.

2. Whenever possible, supply them with specific results. Think about it. When you want to learn how to make income online, you go to someone who is making revenue online to guide you. This quickly establishes you as an authority in that area.

And by helping them, maybe – just maybe – they’ll click on the link in your signature to check out your website. If you direct them to a blog post or article you wrote to answer their question, they’ll be even more likely to investigate.

That’s all there is to it but at the end of the day, it’s a failure-proof way to drive serious traffic to your website using Forum Posts. Apply it and see your traffic soar through the roof. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

If you are looking for improved search engine rank for any page on your website, you have to learn how to write articles in order to make use of one of the major and most useful resources online: article directories.

Just as website directories can be used to promote your website online, article directories can be used to publish your articles. These articles can in turn be used to promote a specific page on your website, and in this respect are more useful than a website directory listing that promotes only your home page.

You have few opportunities to direct search engine spiders directly to a page of your choice, and when one arises it should be made good use of. In fact, other than article directories and links on your website, you are unlikely to find such an opportuníty, and it should be seized whenever it arises. However, very few people actually know how to make best use of such an opportuníty and to use their articles intelligently to drive masses of traffic to their site.

You can use your Author’s Resource to achieve that, but in order to get the Resource read, you have to get the article read. For that to happen, you have to write a good article and then make people read it. To do that your title must be good enough to persuade people to read it. To achieve that you must be able to write a good title. So how do you achieve all of these things? That is the purpose of this article: to teach you how to craft a title that will get you article read, and then to craft a resource that will compel the reader to visit your website – or the web page that you want them to see.

So, first the title: Before you can craft your title you will need a good topic or subject to write about. There are several ways to decide what that should be, but that is another article. Let’s assume that you have decided to write about how to cure a slice in golf. The obvious title would be: “How to Cure Your Golf Slice”.

Would that really be a good idea? How many web pages are there online with that title? A few thousand? A few hundred thousand? In fact if you use the term as a Google search you will find it is 387,000. You have 387,000 other websites competing for these keywords. Now, let’s change it to “How to Cure a Golf Slice”. You get 71,500 competing sites. Just one small word change: ‘your’ to ‘a’ reduces the competition by almost 82%.

What that means is that with fewer competing sites you have a lot better chance of having your website listed close to the top of the listings for the keyword. However, you also have to take the demand into consideration: if nobody is using these keywords in their search you won’t benefit by using them. Using Wordtracker I get three times as many people, searching for ‘cure A golf slice’ than ‘cure YOUR golf slice’. So based upon keyword research the title will be: How to Cure A Golf Slice
Forget Expensive PPC Advertising – There is an Alternative!

This has three times the demand and over a fifth of the supply of the alternative with ‘YOUR’ in the keyword. That’s the difference that one simple word can make to the success or failure of a keyword or keyphrase.

In practice it will make little difference, unless the prospect uses the exact phrase, in which case ‘how to cure a golf slice’ is the more likely of the two terms for somebody to use. Were the term ‘cure my golf slice’ used, both would have the same number of results.

You then write the article, making it as interesting and as useful to the reader as possible, and try to persuade them that they have to find out more by visiting your website. However, the purpose of this article is not to show you how to write articles, but how to use them. You do that using your Resource Box. This is a section that some directories provide in which you have to persuade the reader to visit your site. The directory won’t describe it as such, but that is basically what it is. In fact not all directories provide a separate data box for this, so you have to add it to the end of your article, but either way you design it the same way.

Keep in mind that the resource box should not be used as a bio. Even though the directory might ask you to provide info about yourself, you should use it to promote your website. Here are some ideas for your resource box.

1. Provide more information and a free gift “For more information on this topic and a free gift check out Pete’s website at xxxxxx” .

2. The Second Part Offer “You will find Part 2 of this article at xxxxxx.com, in which you will learn how to put this information to practical use.”

3. The Final Offer “If this article interests you, you will find a limited period free offer on xxxxx.com, that will help you to cure your golf slice.”

These are various uses to which you can put the resource box, and they are all effective in getting the important clicks. However the format that works best for me is something along the lines of: “For more information check out xxxxxx where I will show you how to make every article rock with cash generating pizzazz that makes you more in a month than your website does in a whole year.”

That’s how to use your articles and your resource to make monëy. Some people don’t want the resource to look like an advert. Why not? Advertising is your life’s blood and your resource is the only place in your article where you really can advertise.

Here is an article I read recently which will be very helpful to publicize website!

Copyright © 2007-2008 Tammy M. Ratcliff

If you are not making use of online article marketing to help promote your business, article you may be passing up an unlimited amount of advertising opportunities. Marketing through article writing is one of the easiest ways to gain notoriety for your company, and it is so subtle, it hardly seems like advertising at all.

How It Works

The standard marketing approach for companies has, for a long time, been to take out a billboard, a yellow pages ad, or to pay for a radio or television commercial.

The typical ad would basically proclaim that, “our company is the best”. The trouble with this kind of advertising is that any company can say anything they want to about themselves without having a bit of proof to back it up.

Online article marketing is a much more unique approach. Begin by choosing any subject that has something to do with what your company does or sells, and write a short article about it. Better yet, create an informational article that will appeal to people who are in your target market. For example if you sell toilets, tell people how to install their own toilet. Or if you do landscaping, tell people how to landscape their own property — and in the end, most readers will decide that although you have shown them how to do it themselves, the actual task is hard work and they would prefer to pay someone like you to do the task for them.

Next, find a company who will distribute the article online for you through various e-zines, newsletters and websites, etc. These distribution companies typically charge a small fee for sending articles to publishers, and if need be, some distribution companies can also write the articles for you.

At the end of each article there is something referred to as a “resource box.” In this box, there will be a short, 2-3 sentence sales pitch telling people why they should visit your website, with links leading directly to your company’s website. The goal

of the resource box is to entice the reader to visit your website. It is that easy.

Once a potential client is on your website, he or she can see exactly what your company has to offer. Chances are, they will use your services because they have already received free, useful advice from you through the article. In this way, you have actually proven you are knowledgeable instead of just saying it. This low-key approach tends to be more appreciated by customers than some in-your-face proclamation of greatness.

Is It Worth It?

Absolutely! For your money, you will never find a broader scope of advertising possibilities. Distribution networks are making it possible for these written articles to be seen by hundreds and thousands of potential customers. And when your article is picked up by a website, it has the potential of residing on that website for many years to come, and often, your article could find its way into the search engine results for your article’s topic. That means almost unlimited opportunities for your company’s name to be seen and heard. No other type of advertising can deliver those types of results for such a small fee.

How Big Is Your Dream?

Ever heard of a small company called StubHub? This is an online ticket broker that helps put sold-out event tickets into the hands of fans everywhere. This company is also in the process of being purchased by EBay, Inc. for a measly 310 million dollars!

Interestingly, article marketing was used as part of their marketing strategy. Of course, offering a great service didn’t hurt either. In any event, this company saw the possible benefits of this newer type of marketing and gave it a shot. Who knows, maybe your company will be able to credit some of its success to distributing well-written articles online.

Don’t Just Write It, Write It Well

In order for article marketing to be as effective as possible, it is important that the printed articles have very few mistakes, if any at all. Misspelled words, run-on sentences and other writing errors are really noticeable on a computer screen. You want potential customers to focus on the content of the article, not the mistakes in grammar or syntax. Inevitably, this inattention to detail will only succeed in making your company appear not to care about small issues. A carefully written article shows that details matter to your company. In today’s customer service starved society, a little thing such as this can make all the difference in which company a customer will choose.

That said; if writing isn’t your strong point, don’t hesitate to hire a professional writer. As stated earlier, some online article distribution companies have writers on staff that can help you with this. Other writers do freelance work and can be found advertising their services online. The point is, once you decide to use online article marketing to promote your business, make sure the articles being written truly represent the image of your company that you want to get across.

The Skinny

Online article marketing gives you the opportunity to advertise your company 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, and 365 days per year. It is an easy, inexpensive, and innovative technique being used more and more by Internet savvy businesses. Don’t let this growing trend pass your company by. It could be the key to turning your small business into a major corporation.

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Written by: Tammy M. Ratcliff, (http://www.thePhantomWriters.com) Stop throwing your money away on Ineffective Article Marketing Campaigns! Learn the Secrets of writing reprint articles that can generate thousands of dollars in new sales. The techniques shared in The Phantom Writers $37 ebook could even help you to get more effective articles from your ghost writers. Get your own copy of “Article Marketing For Traffic, Sales and Profit” today, at: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-traffic.html

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