How to Promote on Social Media via Forums

Social engagement is a significant indicator of content's success. Same as any page, forum pages are shared on social media from time to time. Though we think of forums and socials as of totally different platforms, combining this two can help us kill two marketing birds with one stone. But how? I'll tell you which stone to grab.

Why this works

There can be many reasons people find themselves on your site, but if after all they share a link on social media that means they find this experience exceptionally valuable. What is more, that means they find it worth making a part of their social media image.

Any forum is a good platform for promotion itself because there are full of people eager to find answers. But if you concentrate on forums threads that are frequently shared on socials you'll be sure you've chosen the best ones and added one more marketing channel at the same time.

Finding Relevant Forums

To find forums in your niche manually operators for search engines “intitle” and “inurl” will do but it may take long and give irrelevant results. This online script finds relevant forums by keywords that your website ranks for. You set the number of keywords in the corresponding field and the script analyzes the top-100 results for these keywords which contain the word forum in title or URL.

I've used site that specializes on hybrid bikes reviews and buyer's guides.

Here's the list of forums that this script has found:

Some of these forums can be good for promoting and for natural link building. You can stop at this point as you already got some links. In the table you can see how relevant the keyword is and what position it holds. The higher the position the more likely it is that forum is active and worth attention.

Once you have at least one url of a relevant forum it's easy to find even more with competitors analysis toolin Serpstat. Competitors are websites that share the same keywords and that usually means — the same target audience. Pages with plenty of FB shares have great marketing potential.

One more way to find forums in Serpstat: type in your keyword and go to “Top pages”, in column “FB shares” choose “Sort descending” and export the list of url. Then all you'll have to do is press Control+F and look for forums.

What to write on forums

Whatever strategy you choose — hidden marketing or openly representing your website, remember that forum is all about experience and argumentation. Add value to forum, be helpful and give relevant advice, do not just put a link to your website in every random thread. Even if there are no strict rules, try not to be spammy.

If you are giving some tips away which are not directly connected with your product or site, make sure you`ve set up forum signature. Here you can be as creative (and as self-promotional) as you wish. Write something about yourself and what is special about your website. Think of signature as of advertising line. Not all forums allow you to have a signature or have restrictions so make sure you follow the rules.

It is very important to gain reputation on forum. Sometimes it is shown as a number of vote ups you get. Forum is where you can practise your skill of winning people`s favour. The worst thing you can do — simply add one message about your site in every thread and then leave. Join the discussion, ask questions, show interest in other users and make everyone excited and curious.