What is Forum Marketing?
Forum marketing is marketing with the use of forums. These forums are places on the Internet where people of like interests come together and communicate with each other in a type of social networking. However, forums are generally much smaller in size than social network portals on the Internet and they have people that have at least one thing in common.
Multilevel marketers can use forums to improve their networks and create some awareness of their opportunity. They can host their own forum and invite other interested prospects and marketers or they can become a part of an already existing network that deals with MLM. Once there, they can make posts and comments just as one does with blogs. These comments can have their links in an indirect manner (some of them allow obvious links and even text links) which help in bringing in the traffic.
Forums have several topics of discussions going on at once. Marketers can scan all these topics and comment on what they feel like. They can even start their own threads which people may begin discussing about.
What are the Pros of Forum Marketing?
Forum marketing is a cost-efficient method. There are actually no costs to put in if the marketer spends time and posts comments himself or herself.
Since forums have credits to the authors, they help in improving the marketer's own name and even establishing a brand identity. The promotion does on forums keeps increasing in visibility as the person makes more and more posts. There is permanence to a post once made, unless the forum owner deletes it.
Marketers can learn several things about the MLM world through forums. Since experts from all over will be commenting here, forum marketing can be an educative process.
What are the Cons of Forum Marketing?
Forums are prone to spammers and negativistic commentators. The spammers are those that flood the forums with links of their business without any substantiation. Instead of bringing any positive effect on their business, such tactics actually detract from their credibility. Negativist people are those that have something bad to say about the business. These can create a wave of negative energy throughout the forum which can be depressing to others, especially to people who are new entrants in the field.
