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5 Steps to Targeting Your Marketing Message
In order to win at the game of business, a company needs a good plan. This can be done in-house, with a marketing consultant, or with a marketing firm. Here are five steps to developing and implementing a good marketing message: 1. Determine your...
Niche Marketing : 10 Product Creation Tips
Why is it that some niche marketers can churn out product after product with the ease of a Magician pulling rabbits out of a hat, while others struggle to think up a single product idea, let alone produce a product?
If you're finding it difficult...
Promotional Marketing Products - Selecting the Perfect Item
People are known to shop on impulse- buying an item just because it is on sale, or purchasing something because it looks great in the store. When shopping for promotional items, you really can't succumb to impulses. Instead, you must carefully...
The 8 Biggest Newsletter Marketing Mistakes
Newsletter publishing has always made a lot of sense. It makes sense for firms to target their advertising dollars to clients and prospects that have expressed interest in their products and services. However, for many, newsletter marketing has...
Two kinds of Advertising for a Marketing Strategy
Advertising is the lifeblood of any business. If you do not learn how to advertise your products and services both efficiently and effectively, you won't be in business long. While the Internet has lessened or eliminated many of the costs...
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Marketing To Forums: Part 2
Although posting on forums can be a great way to send some free traffic wherever you want it, you have to do it right. Otherwise, you won't get much worthwhile traffic at all.
I've mentioned before that you should only post an advertisement in the signature of your forum postings. Don't make the message an advertisement.
But if your ad is in your signature, then you need to make sure people *see* your signature. This is obvious, but many people make it difficult to see their signature.
Typically, when you respond to a post by someone else on a forum, the original message is, by default, included with your response. Often, people will type their response and leave the original message below their response.
Here's an example of what I mean.
----- Here's a response to some message that someone else posted.
And here's some more of my response.
> Here's the original message > from the person who I'm responding > to. -----
Here's why this is important. Your signature goes all the way at the bottom of the message. This means that it will be below the original message that's included below your response.
How many people that read your response will continue to read the original message as well? Most probably won't. This means they'll never get to the bottom of the message where your signature is. And if that's beyond the bottom of the screen, then your signature may as well not be there at all.
So I recommend deleting the original message from your responses. If you want to respond directly to something that someone else posted, then just include the part you're responding to *in the body* of your message. This way, your response will appear under the original message.
You always want your signature to appear immediately after *your* message.
Moving on. I've also mentioned that you shouldn't advertise off-topic products in your signature. This is especially true if you're posting on forums related to internet marketing.
And here's why.
Let's say you post a message on a forum about how to improve your search engine rankings. But in your signature, you post an ad for herbal health supplements.
Let's ignore the fact
that you're targeting the wrong audience. There's another problem with this. A lot of people who read your message may be looking for good affiliate products to promote. So they might click your link just to see if this might be a good affiliate program.
In this case, you may be creating more competition for yourself. You're giving people a link to an affiliate program that's (presumably) working for you. Usually, I would prefer to keep a good affiliate program to myself. I don't need more people competing with me.
One last issue to think about when including links in your signature. This complicates the picture a bit.
So far, I've been talking about how to effectively advertise products to other people. But there's also another good reason for including links in your signature. You may want to advertise to search engines.
Here's what I mean by that. Whatever you post on a forum will probably be indexed by search engines eventually. And if there are links in your post, then the search engine spiders will follow those links.
So your posts on forums could actually serve as incoming links to your own web sites. If this is your purpose, then you may want to formulate the title of your link a little differently.
You should base your link title on keywords that are appropriate for your web site. For example, if I'm selling a product that cloaks affiliate links, I would probably link to it with something like "cloak affiliate links" or "cloaking affiliate links". And I would use the *same* title for this link *every* time I posted it to a forum.
You can see that your approach to creating a signature for forum posts will be different depending on what your purpose is - to advertise to people or search engines. So make sure you know what your purpose is, and link accordingly.
P.S. If you missed the first article on marketing to forums, you can read it now at http://www.dave-brown.com/articles/forums1.html.
About the Author
Dave Brown is a self-taught marketer and software developer. He also publishes the uncommon and uniquely original newsletter on making the most of your life - A Fresh Perspective. You can learn more at http://www.dave-brown.com
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KnowThis: For Marketing, Market Research, Internet Marketing ... |
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Marketing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
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Marketing.org - Home of the Business Marketing Association |
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Welcome - American Marketing Association - www.marketingpower.com |
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Advertising, Marketing, Media and PR News - Brand Republic |
Find the latest Advertising, Marketing, Media and PR news from Brand Republic, the online resource for up to the minute advertising and marketing news and ... |
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Marketing Magazine - Marketing News - Brand Republic |
Marketing Magazine - Marketing News - Brand Republic. |
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Marketing (Canada) |
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BidVertiser - Pay Per Click Advertising On Sites Of Your Choice. |
Pay per click advertising - online advertising directly on sites of your choice, internet marketing solution for online advertisers. |
www.bidvertiser.com |
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Online Behavioral Contextual Advertising and Marketing. |
Promote your business with today's most effective online advertising technology, contextual advertising at a cost effective metric of CPC, PPC, CPM or CPV. |
www.clicksor.com |
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Sales Jobs / Marketing Jobs / Advertising Jobs - MarketingJobs.com |
Employment site for marketing and sales professionals. |
www.marketingjobs.com |
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The Chartered Institute of Marketing |
The Chartered Institute of Marketing is the world's largest international marketing professional body and helps with career support and information ... |
www.cim.co.uk |
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Marketing: See what people are saying right now on Technorati |
See all blog posts tagged with marketing on Technorati. |
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Marketing Profs - Marketing Concepts and Strategies: Expert ... |
Marketing knowhow from professionals. Newsletter, articles and how-to's. |
www.marketingprofs.com |
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Guerrilla Marketing Online - The Official Site |
Guerrilla Marketing Online is anonline magazine for small business, entrepreneurs, sales people and marketers of all kinds. |
www.gmarketing.com |
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Business Marketing - Small Business Marketing |
Business marketing - Read everything your need to know about small business marketing. |
www.entrepreneur.com |
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All About Marketing |
Adapted from Field Guide to Nonprofit Program Design, Marketing and Evaluation ... Inbound Marketing Includes Market Research to Find Out: ... |
www.managementhelp.org |
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Pages tagged with "marketing" on del.icio.us |
USA Network Announces a NASHVILLE STAR Marketing Partnership With ... - Yahoo! ... Direct Marketing Association: Telephone, Mail & Internet Marketing ... |
del.icio.us |
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ClickZ Internet Marketing Solutions for Marketers |
Includes columns with commentary and analysis on a wide variety of internet marketing subjects ranging from B2B marketing to search engine marketing. |
www.clickz.com |
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Direct Marketing Association: Telephone, Mail & Internet Marketing |
Trade association for users and suppliers in the direct, database and interactive marketing fields, offering seminars and resources, and lobbying for ... |
www.the-dma.org |
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