I am going to tell you about one of the most underrated, yet most effective Free Marketing Strategies on the internet today, Forum Marketing. This Free Marketing Strategy is one that most of the gurus in online marketing use, but don’t like to share. It is so powerful; they want to keep it a closely guarded secret. I am going to change that. So this is a list of the steps it takes to use Forum Marketing to Generate Free Leads for your online business.

1) Pick 2 or 3 Forums that you can comment on daily

You need to pick 2 “high traffic” forums and 1 that is niche specific. Spend as much time as you can on those forums. The more time you spend answering questions on other topics, the more free leads you can generate. Now this will be time consuming, but it’s worth it!

Here is a little “insider” secret to find niche specific forums.

Go to google and type in: Site:.com”powered by vbulletin” Your Niche Keyword Here (put your keyword after the 2nd “)

2) Your Signature

Your signature is where you will put the link that you would like people to click on. If you use your blog as a link, you will get backlinks from these forums. This is a very powerful Marketing Strategy for getting traffic to your blog. I won’t go into detail right now about backlinks, but they are great for SEO. So you bloggers out there can use Forum Marketing as well, for backlinks.

Alright now, back to your “Signature”. I will show you how to access your signature in the forum that you pick. Each forum is different, but the idea is basically the same for all.

First, register as a member of the forum you pick, for personal branding reasons, put your name as your username. Second, login to the forum, find where you can edit your signature. Then create your signature, with your link in it. I show you below, how to put the hyperlink into your signature. You should always complete the rest of your profile and always have a professional looking picture.
Now in order to put a hyperlink in your signature, you will need to write a little code, do not get scared, it is very easy and I show you how it is done.

Sample Signature:

Marketing Mentor Ian Belanger

Want More Online Marketing Tips [url=http://yourwebsitehere.com]More Tips Here![/url]

Now, your advertisement should be your own, so do not copy this one, be creative, come up with a better add. The underlined part will be your link. But, only “More Tips Here!” will show up as a hyperlink in your signature. If you want all of the text to be a hyperlink, put it in between the ] [.

3) Strategy

Ok, here is the Marketing Strategy you will use in Forum Marketing. You must start commenting on other discussions. Read through them, find topics that are niche specific and answer questions as best you can. Always post high quality content. People will not be drawn to click your link if you just put something like “excellent post.” No, I promise you, they will not click on your link. Be articulate, in your answers, share the knowledge. You want to show potential leads what you have to offer them. The more knowledgeable that you appear, the more people will be inclined into checking you out (or click your link).

Once, you have commented on other topics, you can start to create your own topics. Some of the forum’s, will not let you start your own topic, until you have commented on other topic’s. This is why I recommend doing it, besides, being active on these forums will only help you create more free leads. Remember, you must write quality content and write with purpose. You can even use your blog posts as topics.

When you create your topic, your link will always be at the top of the thread, so everyone will see it first. That is excellent exposure, for free. For more secret tips and tricks to Forum Marketing and other Internet Marketing Strategies, check out the paragraph below and click on the link.

Author's Bio: 

Ian Belanger is a successful Internet Marketing Coach and Mentor. His free training offers the same tips and tricks that other experts offer, but where they charge you for it, he will give it to you for free. Just visit his website http://ian-belanger.com Here you will find many articles on various types of Internet Marketing Strategies. Thanks for reading.