Coaches, Are You Maximizing Your Exposure By Using Free Forum Posts?

If you’ve been a professional coach for any length of time, you probably know you can enhance your professional coaching reputation by being an active participant in your niche’s online forums.

Regardless of your coaching specialty, whether you’re a career coach, parent coach, personal performance coach, or any kind of personal coach at all, there are likely Internet forums or discussion groups on your specialty.

But, before posting use caution.

It’s critical that you get familiar with a forum before you post. Be sure and read the rules for each forum (every forum has its own policies.) You might also want to read the forum for a few days before posting to gain a sense of the community and how it operates.

So, how do you find a forum on your niche?

The best way to find a forum (well actually, just about the best way to find almost anything!) is to do a Google search. You can search for the name of your niche plus the keywords “forum,” “discussion group,” or “bulletin board.”

Being an active forum member helps you gain visibility, make contacts, and demonstrate your expertise and helpfulness to your niche. It also gives the other forum members a chance to get to know you as a real person.

In addition to your forum posts, many forums allow posters to add a forum signature as a part of their post. A forum signature is typically two to six lines of advertising or promotional text with a clickable link that is displayed at the bottom of your post. Forum signatures are a reward forums give their members for contributing meaningful information.

Typically, you can use your forum signature to sell your products, services, or promote your website or blog. However, every forum is different. Some forums allow you to post any kind of signature you like, while other forums may let you promote your own products and services, but not affiliate products or services. Some forums prohibit commercial plugs all together.

Forum signatures are a great way to market to fellow forum members. Many forum threads are viewed by dozens of people and all it takes is one person to see your signature, click on your link, and you’ve made make a sale! Best of all, sigs are typically free.

Are you taking advantage of forum posting? If not, what’s stopping you?

What Do You Think?

E. Alvin Davis
“The Coach’s Online Marketing Coach” ™

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