Once you’ve got a virtual shop window for your writing services, it’s time to let people know it’s there. One effective way you can promote yourself is to use forums. There are thousands of forums on any topic you can imagine, so it won’t be hard to find one. As a writer, you can choose among writing forums, work at home forums and forums for any particular area of expertise.

Which Forum To Choose?

For the purposes of promotion, you need to find a forum that is active. Check to see how many threads there are with recent posts to see if the forum is active. Look at the number of users at the bottom of the forum and see when the last person joined. All of this will tell you whether a forum is alive or dead. If it’s dead, move on swiftly. If it’s active and you like the look of it, then sign up. So, how does joining a forum help with promotion? The secret is in the sig.

The Secret Of The Sig

When you join a forum, you get to set up a profile with information about your name and your interests. You can also create a signature that appears at the end of any forum posting you make. This is a good opportunity to create a link to your site. Not only will it help forum users to find you, but many forums are indexed by the search engines, so you will get some Google juice from the posts you make.

No Hit And Run

It’s not good manners to link drop and run. To get the best out of a forum you have to participate fully in it. I often fall into the trap of signing up for a lot of forums, then finding that I don’t have the time to participate. That’s a mistake. The whole point of forums is that you have to join in with the conversation and get known. It’s better to find one that you like and stick to it. If you don’t want to drop by ten forums a day, sign up for the RSS feed so you can see what discussions are live and decide which ones to take part in. Plenty of people have used forums to find jobs and to connect with people they want to work with.

Here are some of the forums I have joined, where I have learned a lot about writing and blogging and made some good friends and connections: Authority Blogger Forum, About Freelance Writing Forum, WAHM.com Forum. Joining forums won’t suit everyone, but they are good places to keep up to date with what’s happening in the writing world and promote as you participate. Have you got any useful forums to add to this list?

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