This is the second blogging tip about driving traffic with forum marketing. I’m not going to rant on about not spamming. That goes without saying. But how can a couple of posts bring you targeted traffic?

After you’ve done a little credibility building in the forum, you ask questions. They can just be low key questions, or….you can go for the controversial.

Many of you understand this concept already. Some of you go for the *out there* type of posts in your blog. Many bloggers regularly stir the opinion pot to boost participation. Forum posts can give you the same mileage.

If you ask smart questions, you can also set the scene for promoting your affiliate product or even your ebook. You can often get a large amount of high quality content generated by the forum readers from just one well thought out question . Your question is just the catalyst that stirs the debate. You can add in additional information as the discussion continues to keep it going.

Like your blog posts, forum content (or threads) is quickly indexed by the search engines. We’ve already mentioned that search engine listings last for a very long time. You’ll get highly targeted traffic, not only from the forum readers, but from organic searches also.

You can learn a lot about what matters to your readers in your niche from this strategy, as well as, reading the other threads in the forum. This gives clues for future product development. Remember the best products solve a problem or make an existing product better.

You can often find the problems that exist in your niche in forum posts. You can learn a great deal about a new niche by visiting a few forums…or even a few highly ranked blogs in your new niche and reading the threads or posts.

This may sound like it’s very time consuming…it can be. Forums can become a giant time sink. Some people just love them and the community aspect. Reading threads can swallow large chunks of time. But, in the end, it will save you time on the learning curve.

How so?

You can study and research to become a niche expert. You learn facts and statistics. But, the lessons you can learn from a forum are what your future readers think and feel about these facts…and the impact they have on them personally.

Of course, this gives you endless ideas for future posts. But more importantly, this type of knowledge is invaluable for positioning yourself to provide products and information to your new niche blog…