9 Tips to get more Traffic, Backlinks and Other Benefits from Forums

Forum traffic is good. Very good. But, I find many bloggers becoming too self centered in forums and can’t see any benefits beyond getting traffic for their blogs. And yeah, backlinks of course.

I find forums as the most powerful means of social networking. Everyone is familiar with the concept so I don’t need to go ahead and tell you the ABC’s of it right? The bottom line is that it lets you engage in fruitful conversations with other bloggers while getting some quality traffic and a ton of backlinks to your blog. But, do the benefits stop there? How can you get the most out of your time committed to forums?

• Genuinely be interested in helping others. It’s all about social networking and people will “dig you” if you “dig for them”.
• Quote the resources from your blogs with a link when it’s relevant. But don’t do this all the time, since it might set an alarm off at the forums moderators’ end.
• Offer to willingly help resolve other blogger’s issues directly via IM or e-mail. I usually mention my IM when another blogger goes through a problem I can do something about. This had done me good in finding loyal readers.
• Most blogs have a Introduce Yourself section. Check that section often and be sure to comment on their blogs. Make an impression on the newbies.
• Try to be engaged in newer discussions. Blogs have a section called ‘New Posts’, which will give you a chance to find all the new posts at one place. This will expose you to more forum browsers.
• Be consistent in your forum participation. People who hang on more tightly tend to harness better results than the people who tend to log on 1 day per week and post to 50 threads.
• Make sure that your signature makes sense. Don’t just put “Tech Blog”, when you can put “Tech Blog - Latest Gadgets, Reviews and Tech News”. It’ll help your CTR, and give you more power in the terms of SEO.
• Find other active bloggers in the forum and put their good articles under discussion. This will do you wonders in making connections with good bloggers out there.
• Brand Yourself! Brand your avater, language and signature. This will help you get noticed and stand-out.

If you’re looking forward to connect to a quality forum for bloggers, I highly recommend Bloggeries. I also hang out at DigitalPoint, but it’s more of a hang out place for Webmaster rather than Bloggers.