Take part on industry and general forums

15 minute tip

We all know - or should know - the power of networking. It enhances your reputation, helps you find business, keeps you in the know, helps you find help and loads more good things too numerous to mention. Face-to-face may be best but when it comes to finding people with similar interests to you (or your perfect customer) there's no quicker way than to join in with some of the thousands of online forums and networking sites.

I started marketing my business this way and get new clients and enquiries from forums nearly every week.

Here are a few simple tips:

1. Find out where your customers hang out. Define your target customer then go look for them.

2. Use a simple signature to drive traffic to your website

3. Use the same username on all the forums you take part in (your business name is good)

4. Avoid any personal attacks or 'slagging' exercises

5. Do contribute useful advice and don't use it to pitch your business unnecessarily. If someone asks for a quote or advice in
your field by all means mention your business BUT blatant self-promotion is actually counter productive.

6. Find an active forum. There's no point in taking part in forums where the last post was 3 months ago.

7. Ask good questions

8. Be professional. Most forums are quite informal so let your personality come through but remember you are marketing your business every time you post

9. Follow-up: get to know who's who on the forum, visit their sites and get in touch 'off forum' if you think you could work together

10. Track the results - as with all things marketing, make sure you track the results of your time spent online. Use Google Analytics or similar to see where website traffic is coming from and make a habit of asking any new business where they first found you. If a particular forum isn't delivering traffic and business it might not be worth pursuing.