Let Your Traffic Grow with Forum Marketing
Forums are excellent market research tool that can be leveraged to engage with visitors.
In recent years, the growth of social media is skyrocketing along with the popularity of authentic and diversified content. As social media algorithms are likely to gather people with similar interests together, companies can utilize this window of opportunity to cater to them with a relatively small effort through online discussions and forums.
Open Forum Marketing Definition
Open forum refers to similar people that get together and share their opinions on a particular topic. Forum marketing focuses on specific subjects so people who joined the particular forum can get access to more detailed information. The participants can have the discussion wherever they are as long as they have something in common such as background, experience, even culture. Brands can tap into these groups to grow their own online community.
An online forum comes with the benefit of providing the ability of interaction with customers, as well as a discussion among themselves. At the same time, brands can troubleshoot flaws and learn how to improve certain aspects of their business as well. As business owners or marketers, there are basically two ways you can start forum marketing. You can either join an existing and relevant discussion or run your own forums. Whichever route you go, there are several points to keep in mind.
If You Decide to Participate in Discussions
Sign Up
If you already have a platform in mind, sign up for an account first. Most rookies made mistakes of being too eager on promoting their business as soon as they join the forum. Avoid making the same mistake. Instead, you should focus on building your reputation in the said-forum you participated first. The key here is to avoid being called on for being too commercial in a supposedly discussion forum.
Think Twice Before You Leap
Seeing a negative comment about your business or products on the forum? Don’t jump into a heated discussion with strangers online without preparing yourself with all the necessary information. Without pre-inspection, you are likely to misunderstand the main idea of the post. Besides, when you respond to a comment, positive or negative, make sure you’re calm and use professional sounding words. An honest and sincere “thank you” can evoke a greater sense of appreciation. At the same time, by staying alert of the situation in your forum, you could easily notify the related departments in your company of any issues raised. Think of it as another method to collect feedback.
Start Discussion
In my opinion, the ultimate purpose of participating in a discussion is to let people be aware of your brands. After weeks or even months of cultivation, by now you probably have earned a certain level of reputation among the forum members. In other words, your posts and words on the forum have value and are considered reliable. So, this is the time for you to “strike”. Still, make it targeted, relevant and less-commercialized. For instance, if you are a gym owner and notice a forum member is looking for a gym membership with a reasonable fee, you could mention to him that your gym is located close to his place and the annual fee is fairly low, and so on. No one would question if it is sponsored or not. From their perspective, it is just a reply without bias.
If You Decide to Run a Forum
Have a Niche
I get it. As a marketer, you want to increase your revenue as much as possible, using any means possible. You think by running a forum, people would naturally be interested in what you have to say. My question: for how long? Even your most loyal customers would lose interest in the long-run unless you have a specific and relevant topic that matters to them and can trigger a discussion. Having a niche is the first crucial point to run a successful forum. Bonus point: you get to segment your customers based on their responses and craft appropriate topics for your next discussion!
Redirect Traffic from Social Media
As a modern digital marketer, you most likely have a Facebook Page or any other mainstream social media accounts. Here’s the thing. In some cases, you can make your social media accounts become the golden gate or teleportation point to your forum or community. There are two ways to do it. First, you can simply attach the link of your forum to your profile so that every person visiting your page or site could see it right away. The second one takes more effort and time. If you see any interesting discussion threads happening on your forum, you can share that specific thread link on your page so people who are interested in the particular thread could be redirected from their social media accounts directly.
Embrace the Differences
Humans are opinionated creatures. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, so every now and then you’re bound to see online clash or heated argument in your forum. Many forum owners choose to spam users putting negative comments or filter out their comments entirely. Though it could work temporarily, but who could guarantee the same users won’t participate again in the future? So, rather than getting offended personally, take all the comments into account and see them as invaluable feedback that could improve your business and products. The next time you encounter any negative comments on your forum, you’ll know how to deal with them ethically.
Key Takeaway
To wrap up, the primary objective of open forum marketing is to convert the generated traffic into customers. Therefore, figuring out how to keep the forum sustainable is particularly important.
Online forums are a great platform to engage with your visitors while giving them the freedom to discuss among themselves. However, beyond that, forums can also serve as an excellent farming point for brands to collect free content that could improve your SEO marketing strategy as well as valuable reviews and customer feedback.
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