September 1, 2016 - If I were to sum up your current social media marketing strategy in three simple steps, it likely entails:

1. Creating a profile/page/platform for your event,
2. Sending out thousands of invites to get your page noticed, and
3. Posting promotional content for your event.

Now, imagine if there were already a preexisting platform with thousands of active users who are innately interested in your niche. Your content would receive the right attention with your event promoted in front of your targeted audience directly.

This is what niche forums are all about; and they can easily drive 15% of your web traffic. Quite similar to Q&A sites, you can engage with your target audience on niche forums as well for the purpose of weaving relationships with potential customers, enhancing your SEO (Search Engine Optimization), driving more traffic to your event page, and doing market research. The major difference being that forum threads generally encourage more elaborate discussions, giving you greater opportunities to build your brand.

However, there are two sides to every coin, and while niche forums offer an excellent platform for targeted promotions, you should not blatantly run a full-fledged marketing campaign there. The reason is that forum participants connect to each other based on shared interests and mutual respect with no intention of achieving financial gain from the communications. So, promotional activities on these websites must be carried out very meticulously and with a personal touch. If you really want to leverage niche forums in your marketing strategy, a number of factors must be taken into consideration, including…

1. Identifying the ideal forum websites for your niche,
2. Separating out the relevant discussions from the endless threads, and
3. Drawing the line between promoting and spamming.

Each of these points has its own set of how-to’s and do’s & don’t’s. As I mentioned already, promotional activities have to be crafted very scrupulously for niche forums because a wrong step can taint your brand name in front of your target audience. This directly implies that you’ll have to invest your team’s time and efforts, which might leave you wondering whether it is even worth the hassle.

On one hand, since your marketing team probably carries out promotional activities in multiple online and offline domains, putting so much work into niche forums may not sound very rewarding. Alternatively, letting 15% of your traffic just slip away doesn’t make sense, either. We really don’t like to brag, but Yapsody does have your back when you’re standing on such predicaments. We offer Yapsody presenters a Digital Marketing Service that allows them to reap that 15% incremental benefit from niche forums without investing their teams’ time and efforts.

In the old days, marketing used to be much about ad spend. However, in today’s world, marketing has become an art in itself that requires an understanding that goes far beyond the obvious. So go beyond the obvious, and visit us next month for more insight on marketing artistry.