Signature advertising on forums is one of, if not the best free forms of advertising on the web. All you have to do is type in some anchor text and wrap that text around a URL and start posting on a forum. It is the kind of promotion I do every day I go on the computer, and it has been the most beneficial advertising I have done yet. I bet that most of you reading this now probably found this link on some forum.
How signature advertising works is like this. After every post you make, another user will read your post and then hopefully notice the link. If you made your anchor text descriptive enough, and it interests them then they will most likely click on the link which will bring them to your website. Always remember to make the text descriptive, and don’t make it sound like spam.
Need help getting your link noticed? Sometimes it’s hard to make your link stand out from your post, but if you take some of the following ideas to mind then you should be well on your way to effectively advertise your forum through your signature.
Decorate your link with the forums BBCode
BBCode is like HTML, you can use it to make stuff look pretty. Make your text bold, italic, colored, you can do whatever really. On just about every forum software, the BBCode values are the same. So it’s easy to just copy and paste it from one forum to the other. I would recommend you make your text colored and bold, because in my opinion that is the best way to make it recognizable.
Common BBCode value are:
- [B]Makes text bold[/B]
- [I]Makes text italic[/I]
- [COLOR=RED]Makes text red[/COLOR]
Just a note: The Size BBCode is valuable too, but most forums don’t allow the text to be much bigger than the default value, so you may not be able to use it. But if you can, use it. Just don’t make it obnoxiously big because that’s just, well, obnoxious!
Post plenty of topics
Topics are what start the chain of posts. If you post a hot topic, you will have the first post in the topic. Hot topics get a lot of replies and attention, so when a new poster goes into see what all the buzz is about, they will have to read your post. You don’t even have to post a topic with 1,000 replies, just a few every once in a while. They will all get some kind of attention depending on the size of the forum.
Types of topics that get decent attention
- Forum Games (What are you listening to right now, Count to on million, etc.)
- Controversial Topics (Like George Bush dodging a shoe)
- News, How-To’s and Top 10 posts. They’re a hit on blog posts, and are usually a bigger hit on a forum.
Ask questions
Sometimes you will be making a new topic to ask a question, but not always of course. When you ask a question, EVERYONE wants to answer it. You will probably get tons of answers from so many different people. Take for example DigitalPoint forums. Ask a question, and on average (based on my experience there) you will get about 5-10 people answering it. That’s 5-10 people looking at your post with your link under it. I’m sure you will get quite a few of those people to click your link.
Spread around some advice, get a few clicks in return
If you answer a question, hand out some good advice, or give a good review on something then it turns out you might be a little liked by that user. You want someone to think “Well, they look pretty nice, I think I might visit their site”.
What do you think are the most effective ways of getting your links clicked on a forum? Do you even think signature advertising is effective?
The Discussion
Leave a Comment Read Again?It’s very nice that you mention this subject. Your explanations are enough.
You make some good points about using signatures in forums. I think the best way to get your signature noticed is to make your anchor text something that grabs people’s attention. When I first started I always just used my blog name as anchor text. No one clicked. Now I use something that makes people want to find out more. Not easy in 3 or 4 words!
I liked the part about using the BBC color code.
I’ve gotten some traffic from forum signatures but surprisingly even though I’ve got plenty of posts on DP which is a massive forum, I seem to get better traffic when posting on smaller forums (such as Bloggeries and Aussie Bloggers). It’s probably because the user base is more targeted, where as DP has more diverse users, most of which are only there for their own benefit.
My point is that people shouldn’t limit themselves to just the big forums as smaller, niche forums can sometimes give better results.
Using signature in email is effective. I can remember that I got a surge in traffic because of using signature my email, this was due to chain mail !
*in my email. Sowi typing mistake
You’re absolutely right! Putting your blog name as an anchor is almost as bad as having it as “click here”. Well, it’s not AS bad but it has the same effect of using the “click here” anchor text; nothing.
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