Forums can be a useful for anyone doing business online, both in terms of reading the content and actively participating in the discussions. Reading a forum’s archives can be a good way to obtain a basic knowledge about a topic, and it also provides a historical perspective on trends and opinions.
Participation, whether as a member, moderator, or owner, can help one achieve recognition within a business community, and may even generate highly-qualified business leads. Forums differ, however, in their treatment of self-promotion; some disallow any hint of self-promotion, some are geared specifically towards self-promotion, and many fall somewhere in between, limiting URL’s to an off-the-page member profile.
We should make a definitive list of local, regional and national forums that we can post in with the ability to as a signature under your posts We should then outline strategies to promote in clever ways, as most forums will ban you automatically if you come right out and promote a product or service.
People in the forums will make fun of blatent endorsements too, which is a really bad PR move, so being tactful is very important if you expect to generate referrals this way.
