When it comes to engaging your grassroots demographic, forums are the best bang for your buck. I recently started at thread for a client that garnered 1,300 views and 4 pages of replies within the first week. I was able to have 3 live signature links and two additional text only links pointing to my clients site.
Now it is important to remember you won’t retire on this type of advertising but it is a great, low-key way of getting your brand out to those that matter. Long-term this type of promotion is invaluable to your online marketing mix.
Update January 21, 2010
Let’s fast-forward a couple of weeks and take a deeper look at this method of promotion. I am also able to compare it to forum posts started the same day in the commercial advertising area of the forum – the number of views is completely lopsided and this just proves that forum promotion is valuable but only if done correctly!
