By : Nidhi Gupta

Who said forums are only good for getting help and advice?

There is often so much activity on certain forums that a normal forum-less website can only dream of.

While you can help other members and ask for help on the discussion forums, you can also tap into the abundant traffic of forums and drive it back to your blog.

Following are a few ways to get other forum members to notice you and visit your site at least once.

Start an argument with another member
And by this, it doesn’t mean you start a nasty kind of argument. Just a normal debate between you and another member where you quote each other and try to disprove your opponents’ claim or point of view.

When a debate starts in a particular thread between two members, other members usually don’t interfere. But this doesn’t mean they are not reading. They silently read the debate and derive their own conclusions.

If you wisely pick a weaker opponent to debate with, or you simply have more knowledge than your opponent to easily win the argument, you’ll get a lot of people clicking on your signature link, eager to read more of your thoughts on the subject.

Become an active member in a sub-forum
Pick a certain sub-forum (a forum category) that relates to your blog, and actively participate in all its discussions. Be the first one to solve a problem in a new thread. Always be eager to offer help and advice to fellow members. And Be welcoming to the new members.

This will definitely get other members to appreciate your help and altruism and have them wanting to know more about you on your blog.

Source: Bloggingbits.com

Spread the word: related/bookmark it/readit

Become a moderator
All right, you can’t really become a moderator at will, but if you try hard enough, why not?
Although becoming a moderator requires a lot more commitment and active participation in all the forums on your part, if you manage to pull it off on a fairly busy forum, the effort is worth it.

When you become a moderator, you are instantly promoted from being just another member with worthless opinion to a position of authority, where you are seen to have an authentic and well-researched opinion on all matters.

So, when a forum member clicks on your blog link, he already sees you as authority on a particular subject, which is the hardest part of converting a casual visitor to your site into a regular reader.

Therefore, by becoming a moderator, you not only draw more attention to yourself (and your signature) but you also get visitors who are already inclined to become your readers.

Optimize your signature
Do you have a signature link that says “My blog”? Or is it simply “yourblog.com” or some such anchor text?

Having a well-written link anchor text in your signature is essential if you want others to notice the link. If you did everything else right but have a poorly described link anchor text, you simply wasted your time.

The best way to describe a link is to put it in the form of title and a sub-title.

Example: Life with Church: Do you know you can drastically improve your life with the help of church?

Above is much better and appealing than a simple “Life with church” or “lifewithchurch.com” (only for example.).

Drop your links in the posts
Not in a spammy way. Because if you drop links without establishing yourself as an active and helpful member first, you’ll be ignored, suspended, or banned. So don’t even think about spamming.

But if you want to help a member out and have already a post on your blog related to the member’s query, feel free to refer him to your blog.

If you are already seen as an authority member on the forum, no one would object to your occasional link dropping.