I see this all the time. Someone asks about how to promote their forum and immediately a bunch of people suggest that they go around to other forums with their link in their signatures. But really, is this such a great promotion method?

I've been thinking about this lately and I've decided that it's not really a great use of promotion resources. First of all, you're tagetting people who are already members of another forum. This means that they do enjoy participating in online communities, which is good, but it also means that they may not have a lot of time to be a part of yours. Secondly, you are spending a lot of time targetting a relatively small number of potential members. You have to have the time to go to these other forums and write valuable posts (otherwise you're just spamming ). and you're spending all this time on a limited number of potential members: people who are already part of this other forum. Wouldn't it be a better use of resources to target people who aren't already part of another community?

I have had some success with this but have found it to be very time consuming. If I write, say, 5 good quality posts in another forum I *might* get one member at my site. If those 5 posts take me 10 minutes each to write, I've spent almost an hour working to get one member. And my time is not cheap! I've also found that, as I alluded to above, these users usually don't become good contributing members of my forum. After of 316 posts at (a certain other forum), I've got 1 really good quality member from my signature link. The signature links also don't show up on my referrer logs at all.

(Now, I will say that I never do this unless I am really interested in the topic and really do want to contribute. One of my biggest pet peeves is other forum admins coming to my site solely to promote themselves. If you want to be a regular member of my forum, that's great, you're welcome to come. But if you want to use my site to promote your site then that's just rude).

Really, can't we come up with any better ideas? My opinion is that if you want to target members of other forums it would be much less time consuming to ask about a partnership or purchase adveritisng on the site. In general though, it would be better to find users who aren't already members of other forums by partnering with content-based sites instead. The problem is finding them!

Do you find that this method works for you? Do you feel that it's worth your time? I imagine it could have more of an impact on smaller/newer sites.

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Megan
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Great insight as always, Megan.

I'll start off by saying this. The majority, and I mean vast majority of members at AdminFusion have come via signature links. I would assume 85%. On top of that, I am going to say that another 5-10% came from announcements in other forums (stuff such as forum reviews, announcement of new services and promotions, advertising offers, etc.). So we are talking about 90-95% of ALL 250 members at AdminFusion coming directly from my posts in other forums. Does that mean it is an effective method of promoting? Most definitely it does. The big question, though, is it an efficient way of promoting? That I am not sure of and that's what you're trying to get at also.

For AdminFusion, it has proven to be the most effective promotion method, but I will be honest - we have not tried a variety of methods. We have paid for banners and text links before, but never received very good results from them. This might can be attributed to the fact that we never really gave it a chance though. The other great promotion tool for forum is contests and other in-forum promotions. These are typically extremely effective if implemented properly but are almost always short-term.

So anyways...if signature links are not the best way to go about doing things, what is? Who knows, there is no formula. If you are worried about promoting in forums in which you are promoting to people who are already members of another forum, then where else are you going to go? I've always been under the impression that forums were the best place to promote forums. The people who you are promoting to are obviously interested in the whole forum environment, so in that sense, you have already reached your target audience.

On a final note...even with all of these uncertainties regarding the results/impact of signature links, I will continue to use that promotion method for AdminFusion until my fingers fall off. Promoting via forum signatures is very time consuming, there is no doubt about that. For that reason, it is not an option for everybody. I am fortunate enough to be in college so I don't have to worry about a full-time job or a family to raise, but many people do have to worry about these things. These are the people who must turn another direction...towards paid advertising, promotions, contests, etc.

On a final final note. Another something that forum owners often lose sight of is their current members. Invest in your current members, you worked hard to get them so do not let them slip away. They are easier to contact than any other person out there, so use that to your advantage via emails and newsletters. Always be sure to create new content, answer questions, and fulfill your members' needs. If you do this, you will find that you won't be forced to spend as much time seeking new members to fill the empty spots where your unhappy members left.

See, I'm operating under the assumption that anyone who knows they want to be involved in a webmaster forum already is. So why bother targetting them? Sure, I could try to steal members form my competition but I don't think that's a very cool thing to do. You're also still targeting a limited circle of people. If we're all operating in a closed circle (only targetting people who are already members of forums) then we're going to run out of potential members at some point. And especially valuable members who have the time to contrubte to your site (becuase they're not trying to contribute to 5 other forums).

I think another reason this works well for you is that you are specifically targetting forum people. So it's more natural to promote via forums - that's where your audience hangs out. For me (and probably moreso for non-tech related forums) it's probably less likely that you'll find members via other forums.

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Megan
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Right, I understand completely. The problem is figuring out where else is better to promote. Right now the best place we can think of is in forums, so that is what we are doing.

Somebody who owns forums about dog lovers might go to the local pet store or veterinarian and put up flyers. On that note, it would be nearly impossible to market towards webmasters the same way in your local community. That won't work for us because our target audience when compared to the population as a whole is quite small. Because of this, you're left with doing it on the internet. The only thing you can do is try to think of places webmasters commonly visit. Forums...webmasters visit forums all the time, and forums are extremely accessible...they allow for self promotion...etc, so naturally, it is going to be a major advertising median for forum owners.

You can't just log into good-tutorials and put your signature on their website, that's the problem with places that do not have forums. You cant "do it yourself"...you have to pay the owner to do it.

Also, I wanted to point out this thread. If you read it, you'll find that some of the members here at AF do indeed look at signatures, most will do so depending on what is in the post right above that signature.

Megan:
I found your forum on your signature in this forum. So it can be a good thing. (I have not register, just bookmarked it)
I disagree with you I think you can get members from write good posts and have the forumlink in your signature. I have got alot of members that way.
But I would'nt do it again because I know its rude now.
Anywhy I agree with you in the with wasted time. Its takes to long time. It is better ways to marked your site.

And Ryan:
Thanks for the tips on hanging up flyers in a petshop (I have a dog forum )
You are a genius!

Wow, are you serious? haha, what are the odds of that...

I found AdminFusion froma signature link, but I was only interested because I had a forum. However, I think signature links are important because you get a link to your site. PageRank wise, it can be very helpful. My site offers other stuff than just the forum, so I try to target other forums and offer the other stuff.

Unless your forum has something other forums do not, it will be very hard to take people away from the community they are already used to.

I also make it a point to link to my site via a signature at forums I visit and post at. For me, I have had many members find my site that way. I don't know the exact figures but I will give you a couple of other ideas I've tried. I have sent many many e-mails out to family and friends about my forum. So far, I think less than five people have registered based on those e-mails. And not surprisingly, none have posted. I also considered having business cards printed and then leaving them on tables at restaurants I frequent. But I tried this with another business I run and it didn't do anything for me. Getting people that aren't on the Internet at the moment onto your Internet site hasn't worked well for me. And as Ryan mentioned, forums are one of the only places you can freely enter information on a website without paying for it. Blogs do the same thing with the comments option but a lot of blog owners consider that spam.

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Mark Blair
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Megan, if you offer something unique, and stand out from the competition, rather than being the same old webmaster forum we see all the time, people will be more motivated to join, and they may even stay for good. Regarding your point about "stealing members" why should you feel low on yourself? if people end up joining and staying at your forum and leaving the originating forum, it just means they like your forum better.. it's not your fault your forum is attractive, is it? IMO - if you manage to gather a few/many members from other forums, it goes to show that people prefer your forum, and that's something to be proud about.

Take my forum for example (I don't mean to self-promote but it's a good example IMO) http://www.hostaddicts.com - I've looked around at a few other webhosting forums and have analyzed their weaknesses, and their what I would call "holes" and what I try to do is provide my members with features that other webhosting forums fail to provide. I will be integrating a webhosting directory, reviews section, tutorials section, and webhosting articles section into my webhosting forum, and I honestly don't think there are other webhosting forums that provide that, and integrated into the forum system aswell! I try to make my forum stand out from the rest as much as possible, and that's a trait that will bring a good amount of members, no doubt.

Anyways, back onto the topic, just don't feel like it's a crime by linking to your forum in your signature at a competing forum. The truth is we're all thieves, think of it like that, everyone steals everyone elses members, it's called "competition" To keep up with the "competition" you have to provide something that the big players don't.. and all those things I mentioned in the first paragraph.

I hope I made some sense atleast.. I wish you all the best with your webmaster forum!

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Just to clear a few things up:

I didn't mean that I was asking for advice here - just trying to start a discussion about whether this is really such a great idea.

I also didn't mean to say that it doesn't work at all - it does, it's just not all that time efficient IMO (depending on your circumstances).

I also didn't mean to infer that there's a problem with using signature links in other forums. Sure, that's fine as long as you are contributing in some sort of a valauble way. My problem is when it's blatantly obvious that the person is only there to promote themselves and does not contribute anything of quality.

And I generally consider it to be spam too when the people aren't attempting to contrubte in any sort of a valuable way. I've had a couple of forum admin type people come to my forum and do this and I think it's really rude. As I said - if you want to be a valuable member of a community that's great, but don't show up solely to use my site resources for your personal gain. Contibuting in a valuable way with a signature link is very different from posting nothing but junk messages with a signature link. That's rude.

Ryan - you are a special case in that you are targeting forum admins, and the best possible way to reach them is through forums. This is not the case with most other forums. I imagine you could get boatloads of members through the software specific forums. That would be the best way to promote *for you*. This doesn't apply accross the board IMO.

I'll reiterate what I said in my first post - I have had a certain amount of success with this but it has been limited and *time consuming.* Therefore, I don't think it's necessarily the best way to promote a forum. It might be an okay way depending on your topic and circumstances.

Edit: And yes, I do think it's uncool to promote through direct competitors. I don't have anything against the ones I would actually consider posting in so I think it's rather rude to use them for my own gain. It's like posting an ad for McDonalds in Burger King. Yeah, sure, people might like my forum better but I still think it's uncool to use them that way. I actually did do this years and years ago but had very limited success with it.

DiaVoLo - thanks for joining TWF! Have you posted at all? I'll keep an eye out for you.

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Megan
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