Forum Promoting

[SoaCahToa]

Hey everybody, hopefully you can help me with some research on different marketing strategies. Im sure each of you use your own methods for marketing your companies, but do any of you use web forums?

If you do use forums, what forums do you find to generate the most business? Do you ever offer lower prices for forum users or any specials like that? Lastly, and most importantly, do you find that forum marketing is a sucessful way to find more clients?

Thanks for your input everyone!

[Tera]

Sure, It's a good idea to offer your services on forums. I recommend using Google or Yahoo to do a search for the service you are offering (the way you would do if you were the customer) , then look through the results and find forums that will allow you to solicit your service, register and march in there with a big discount just to get things started and stirred up. Go nuts, but make sure it's a limited offer!

[le00]

Well, if you have many forum users, it can be very active and helful. Generally, people like forums with many users and a lot of posts. Also, i think people like helping each other, like a Community support thing.
I've had a few forums and they were promoted by personal talk (man2man) or by a good review somewhere etc.

Technically talking, a bit of SEO can be helpful

[SoaCahToa]

Thanks for the suggestions everybody! I'm definately going to start using forums as a promotion tool.

Anybody else have any positive (or negative) results from forum posting?? Im really interested in techniques also! Thanks again everyone!!

[ldcdc]

Advertising on forums can be a double edged sword. Once you get yourself a good number of users who are also heavy posters on a forum, word of mouth advertising alone is going to keep on building your numbers. However, you need to be aware that the same forum they use to praise, they use to complain, and many of the little mistakes your employees might do, can end up published as new threads on the forum. With the right approach the damage can be mitigated, but you really need to have a good service to keep such threads to a minimum.

[SoaCahToa]

Thats a very good point ldcdc. I hadn't even thought about forum posters spreading all the bad news from a company. Thanks for the great input everyone, it definately will help me to decide on ways to promote my company!

[imaclient]

Having a forum is a plus on your company. People could talk about your product or services both negatively and positively. Don't be bothered about negative comments as long as you can handle them. Sometimes these negative comments are coming the other companies that have the same service/product as yours. If you handle/solve the problem then that will again make a positive outlook on your company.

[SoaCahToa]

Thanks for the input imaclient. The more i get the better educated i will be, and that always helps with web hosting! It look like im going to use some forum promoting because it is easy, and seems somewhat effective!

Thanks everybody!

[HostingAmerica]

+1 forum posting, go for it. There's nothing to lose! Just be sure that you've got good service to back things up. The flames and 10-page threads I've seen for bad hosts can be pretty remarkable..

[SoaCahToa]

Thats true HostingAmerica. I have seen many threads that are devoted to simply flaming a single host. Hopefully i wont have anything go horribly wrong to warrant that type of result though.

Definately gonna give it a try!

[appage]

As a newer host, I think that forums are a great way to get the word out about your service. I've seen some good results already. Hopefully I can avoid receiving a 10 page flame!